Climate Change

Dr. George Ban-Weiss is an Assistant Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at USC, and the Pasquale and Adelina Arpea Early Career Chair. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees at University of California, Berkeley. After graduate school he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Carnegie Institution, Department of Global Ecology at Stanford. Prior to joining USC in 2013, George was a scientist in the Heat Island Group and Climate Science Department at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. George’s research uses numerical models and field observations in concert to investigate air pollution, climate, and land cover change, ranging from neighborhood to global scale. He has over 40 publications in the peer-review literature, funded in part by National Science Foundation, Rose Hills Foundation, California Energy Commission, California Air Resources Board, Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, and USC’s Visions and Voices. His research has informed public policy in California and been highlighted by the Los Angeles Times, NPR, New York Times, and Huffington Post, among others. George was named by MIT Technology Review as one of the world’s 35 top innovators under the age of 35 (TR35), and was part of the development team that won an R&D100 award. George also received the National Science Foundation (NSF) Early Career Award, and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Global Environmental Change Early Career Award, both in 2018.

Dr. Gibson teaches courses on global environmental politics, globalization, global public health, non-state actors and social movements. She received her Ph.D. in International Studies from the University of Miami in 2011. Her research focuses on the role of civil and “uncivil” society participation in transnational politics. As part of her dissertation, "Dynamics of Radicalization: The Rise of Radical Environmentalism against Climate Change,” she conducted field and participant observation research at a variety of international summits, including World Social Forums in Brazil and Senegal, the 2010 G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, and the United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Cancun and Paris in order to assess the impact of environmental social movements and activist networks.