Harvard Hires 8 New Climate Faculty Across FAS, Graduate Schools

Harvard hired eight new climate faculty members in 2024 as the Salata Institute continues to expand climate research and hiring, the University announced earlier this month.

The new faculty span disciplines and schools: Aliya Korganbekova and John Mulliken at Harvard Business School, Jeannine Cavender-Bares and Fiamma Straneo in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Zachary Schiffer and Le Xie at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Wolfram Schlenker at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Elisa Iturbe at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

James H. Stock, Director of the Salata Institute and the Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability, wrote in a statement to The Crimson that hiring climate-related faculty members is central to Harvard’s role as an educational institution.

“Education is at the core of what we do, and having faculty whose teaching and research is in climate fields is critical to fulfilling our educational responsibility,” he wrote.

Schlenker, newly a Global Food System professor, the decentralized nature of Harvard’s sustainability network — compared to dedicated sustainability schools at other universities — creates a more collaborative environment.

“One thing I like about Harvard’s set up is that Salata is not within one school, but it’s a provostial initiative, and it’s basically aimed at bringing people across campus together,” he said. “Since climate change and sustainability is such an interdisciplinary problem, I personally think this is the right way to go.”

At the Kennedy School, Schlenker studies how changing weather conditions will affect agricultural yield and food prices. He currently teaches a course entitled “Environmental and Climate Economics” with Stock and will head a food policy course in the spring.

At SEAS, Schiffer, an assistant professor of Applied Physics, works at the intersection of electrochemistry and products like steel, aluminum, cement, and fertilizer.

“The question is: How do we take advantage of this distributed green electricity to start efficiently and sustainably doing chemical synthesis?” he said.

Schiffer, who teaches an undergraduate fluid mechanics course, will shift in the spring to offering an upper-level elective course focused on electrochemistry and sustainable chemical manufacturing.

Mulliken, a senior lecturer at HBS and senior climate adviser for Boston Consulting Group, currently teaches the first-year MBA course on strategy, which features climate-related case studies involving the sustainability goals of a Norwegian ferry company and IKEA. Next year, he plans to lecture on climate and competitive advantage.

Though Mulliken said he has always had an interest in climate, “I really had to find my way back” after serving as the Chief Technology Officer at e-commerce company WayFair and dipping his toes into other business ventures.

“I wanted to work on an even higher level than just building a single solution,” he said. “So I have found my way here to teach strategy and, really, strategies as it relates to climate.”

Joining Mulliken in the wave of climate faculty hires is Cavender-Bares, a professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology whose work focuses on studying the biodiversity of plants through spectral biology, the interaction of light with biological surfaces.

“We’re just going to see a lot of environmental change in the coming decades, and our ecosystems have to be healthy,” she said.

Cavender emphasized Harvard’s responsibility to commit to sustainable practices.

“Humans have the ingenuity and the capacity to give back to our planet and create resilient ecosystems that can withstand environmental change and to maintain a habitable planet for humanity,” Cavender said.

“That’s why I think it’s so important for Harvard to have hired people that are focused on how to do that,” she added.

—Staff writer Xinni (Sunshine) Chen can be reached at sunshine.chen@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @sunshine_cxn.

—Staff writer Christie E. Beckley can be reached at christie.beckley@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cbeckley22.