Development

María Villalpando Páez

PhD
María is interested in exploring rural and peasant women’s role in the advancement of food sovereignty and in understanding the complex negotiation processes between communities, individuals, and the environment in rural and agricultural communities in Mexico.

Kate Cullen

PhD
Kate Altemus Cullen (she/her) is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Energy & Resources Group and Fulbright-Hays Fellow.

Dawson Verley

MS

Dawson is a Master’s student in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley. His interests lie at the intersection of data science and sustainable development, with a focus on climate adaptation, agriculture, and natural resource economics. He’s currently studying weatherization policies in Europe and the domestic political economy of climate finance in Latin America. Before joining ERG, Dawson worked on natural resources policy in Alaska’s state legislature. He grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, and holds a BA in Political Science from Stanford University.

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Faraj Sungkar

MS
Faraj is a master’s student in UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group (ERG) with an interest in engineered biomass, biofuels, and bioenergy systems that enable the removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Cora Cliburn

MS
Cora is a second-year master’s student focused on climate adaptation and water in the West.

Sean Brown

MS
Sean Brown is a first year Master’s student interested in using the framework of complex systems to better understand natural and human subsystems as parts of a larger, integrated system, and to identify interactions and feedbacks between these domains in order to effectively address major environmental issues.

Cecilia Han Springer

MS, PhD

Policies for an Ecological Civilization: China, Carbon, and Economic Reform (PhD ’19) Cecilia is a PhD candidate at ERG. Her dissertation uses economic modeling and social science to critically analyze several of China’s flagship energy and climate policies. She is a research affiliate at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s China Energy Group, where she works on industrial energy efficiency. Previously, Cecilia worked in Wash­ing­ton, DC on inter­na­tional cli­mate, energy, and development pol­icy at Cli­mate Advis­ers. She is on the Cal Wushu team, where she studies her...

David Hammond

MS

Achieving Grassroots Participation in Agricultural Development: Lessons from One Organization in Guatemala (’94 M.S.)

Naina Gupta

MS

Combining Super-Efficient Appliances with Off-Grid Solar Photovoltaics (12 MS)

Adriana Gonzales

PhD

Adriana Gonzales is a PhD student at the Energy and Resources Group. Gonzales’ interests includes examining how the responses of local Caribbean communities to energy inequities in the wake of climate change-induced disaster, can be used to reimagine more equitable and sustainable power systems. Gonzales is also interested in working across linguistic regions of the Caribbean to look at the islands most vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change. They have proposed looking at Dominica and Puerto Rico’s energy systems and communities using an interdisciplinary, mixed methods approach....