WUCCP is gathering a database of all graduate students and postdocs working on climate-related work, such as research, internships, teaching, and other projects. The purpose is to foster connection and consolidate information about the wide-ranging climate projects happening at WashU. If you do work related to climate change, please fill out this form in order to be listed below.
*The IPCC Tags, derived from the draft outlines of the IPCC AR6 Report, categorize climate work. Graduates and Postdocs in this database self-reported their own work’s foci under these categories.

Samuel Allen
OTD Candidate
- Email: allen.s.d@wustl.edu
Other Institutional Affiliations: Social Exclusion Lab

Abigail Aderonmu
Postdoctoral Research Associate, InCEES
- Email: aabigail@wustl.edu

Matthew Austin
Biodiversity Postdoctoral Fellow, Living Earth Collaborative
- Email: matthew.austin@wustl.edu
I am a pollination ecologist who studies how pollination systems are affected by changing environments. At WashU, I am studying how climate change affects the time of year that plant species bloom, and how this in turn affects the ecology and evolution of plant-pollinator communities.
Other Institutional Affiliations: Living Earth Collaborative

Ivy Blackmore
Postdoctoral Researcher, Public Health/Fisheries Ecology
- Email: ivyblackmore@wustl.edu
As a postdoc, Ivy is focused on implementing an intervention in coastal Kenya that addresses malnutrition and its intersections with fisheries sustainability. Her research interests include rural food production systems and livelihood security in low income countries, social-ecological interactions, and subsistence agriculture adaptation and resilience to climate change.
Other institutional affiliations: E3 Nutrition Lab; Humphries Lab

Rebecca Dudley
PhD Candidate, Anthropology
- Email: rebecca.a.dudley@wustl.edu
Rebecca Dudley is a PhD student in Sociocultural Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on industrial farmers in the United States, how they interact with institutions of governance and technology, and how environments are transformed. In this research, she brings in theoretical lenses from economic and environmental anthropology, science and technology studies, and historical ecology. She is particularly interested in how climate change-related events are disrupting industrial farming processes, and how industrial agriculturalists are responding. Rebecca has extensive experience working within the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Other institutional affiliations: Agri-Food Workshop

Georgy Falster
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Earth and Planetary Sciences
- Email: gfalster@wustl.edu
I aim to better understand changes in the global water cycle during the past 2000 years. This will help us to understand the response of the water cycle to future global climate changes.

Vincent Fasanello
PhD Candidate, Evolution, Ecology and Population Biology
- Email: vfasanello@wustl.edu
I combine Experimental Evolution with large-scale biogeography research to better understand how organisms evolve in- and adapt to- harsh and fluctuating environments. With this unique combination of approaches, I am able to explore not only the patterns found in nature but also the underlying evolutionary and ecological processes that contribute to their formation and maintenance.
Other institutional affiliations: Botero Lab (WUSTL); Fay Lab (University of Rochester).

Emma Frawley
PhD Candidate, Evolution, Ecology, and Population Biology
- Email: emma.frawley@wustl.edu
I’m interested in investigating genetic and phenotypic variation in wild plants with agricultural and cultural value, and broadly motivated by improving the sustainability of our food systems.
Other institutional affiliations: Dept. of Anthropology; Danforth Plant Science Center

Abigail Hunt
JD Candidate, Energy and Environmental Law Society
- Email: abigail.h@wustl.edu
I am a law student dedicated to pursuing public interest environmental law. I will be spending my summer working with the USDA Office of General Counsel and I am excited to pursue my passion, working at the intersection of rural equity, environmental sustainability, and social justice.

Jack Hutchings
Staff Scientist, Konecky Lab
- Email: jackh@wustl.edu
The stable isotopes of water are critical tracers of both modern and past hydroclimate regimes. Current research activities include: measurement and interpretation of triple oxygen isotopes in modern precipitation, developing paleo-hydroclimate records using the hydrogen isotopic composition of leaf waxes, and synthesis of recent literature towards improved models of precipitation-to-leaf wax isotopic differences.

Zack Kalinowski
JD Candidate, Law
- Email: Z.a.kalinowski@wustl.edu
I work to raise awareness about environmental issues and the interactions between the law and the environment at the law school. In academic year 2020-21 I plan to write my student note on the future of environmental Litigation as climate change continues to change society and how we operate.
Other institutional affiliations: Energy and Environmental Law Society (EELS)

Joonmo Kang
PhD Candidate, Social Work
- Email: joonmokang@wustl.edu
My dissertation research examines the impact of climate-related disaster on the livelihoods and everyday vulnerability of the marginalized population living in jjokbang-chon, one of the last remaining slum neighborhoods in South Korea. The study also examines the role of social work institutions in addressing this population’s needs and challenges.

Alessandro Mauceri
PhD Candidate, Earth & Planetary Sciences
- Email: a.a.mauceri@wustl.edu

Jake Ogata Bernstein
PhD Candidate, Earth & Planetary Sciences
- Email: jobernstein@wustl.edu
My work involves refining techniques that geochemists use to reconstruct the behavior of the global sulfur cycle, which is coupled to the carbon cycle through a series of (usually biological) reactions and supports inferences about the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans over Earth’s history. In particular, I focus on a series of rocky outcrops near St. Louis that were deposited ~450 million years ago, at a time when exceptionally high sea levels had submerged much of the North American Midcontinent (then near the Equator) in a vast, shallow sea.
Other institutional affiliations: Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry Lab.

Jarunetr (Nadia) Sae-Lim
PhD Candidate, Earth and Planetary Sciences
- Email: jsae-lim@wustl.edu
I am interested in Quaternary paleoclimate, climate change, wildfire, remote sensing, and GIS. My research involve reconstructions of past climates and ecological properties based on multi-proxies from lakes in Alaska and Peruvian Andes.
Other institutional affiliations: Dept. of Earth and Planetary Science’s Climate and Paleoclimate Laboratory.

Callie Sharp
JD Candidate, Law
- Email: csharp@wustl.edu
I will be co-president of the Energy and Environmental Law Society (EELS) at the law school for the ’20-’21 academic year. My undergraduate research was conducted at Argonne National Laboratory and focused on organic carbon prediction methodology in the permafrost region. My work experience includes lab and field technician work for the DOE and work with university sustainability education programming, and I will be working as a legal extern for the EPA Office of Regional Counsel in Chicago during summer 2020.

Jenise Sheppard
JD Candidate, December 2021
- Email: j.sheppard@wustl.edu
Other institutional affiliations: Tyson Research Center; Goodman Theatre Company; Missouri Sierra Club

Kai Su
PhD Candidate, Anthropology
- Email: sukai@wustl.edu
I study environmental archaeology in Southwest China. It is about how climate change affected the rise and fall of an archaeological settlement, or more broadly of a regional civilization.
Other institutional affiliations: Dept. of Anthropology’s Geoarchaeology Lab.

Christopher Weatherly
PhD Candidate, Social Work
- Email: weatherly@wustl.edu
Chris Weatherly is a 3rd year doctoral student in social work at the Brown School as well as a licensed clinical social worker. His research focuses on the impact of climate change on mental health, specifically looking at this intersection from a system dynamics perspective.
*These topics are derived from the table of contents of the IPCC AR6 report.