Media Advisory: Stanford experts on wildfires

Fire and climate

Benjamin Bryant
Bryant, a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford, is an economist and decision support modeler with a joint affiliation between Stanford’s Water in the West program and the Natural Capital Project. He has studied how risks from wildfire depend on the interaction of climate change and the way California manages growth and land use. He currently focuses on understanding how forest management to mitigate wildfire risk provides a range of other benefits, such as clean and reliable water supplies, and helping the state meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets.
Contact: cell (206) 351-6613; office (650) 736-3666, bpbryant@stanford.edu

Noah Diffenbaugh
Noah Diffenbaugh is an expert on the climate system and understanding the influence of climate change on extreme events, including wildfires. He has served as a lead author for Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and has provided testimony and scientific expertise to the White House, the governor of California and U.S. congressional offices. Diffenbaugh is a professor at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and the Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
Contact: cell (650) 223-9425, office (650) 223-9425, diffenbaugh@stanford.edu

Chris Field
Field, a climate scientist, is part of a rural air quality research project, in collaboration with the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford, that examines wildfires’ effects on respiratory illness. He served from 2008 to 2015 as co-chair of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which provided the scientific foundation for the Paris Climate Accord. He is the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment; founding director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science; the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences and School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.
Contact: cell (650) 823-5326, office (650) 736-4352, cfield@stanford.edu

Rob Jackson
Jackson studies a range of wildfire impacts, including those on the carbon cycle and soils. He is the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Provostial Professor at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy.
Contact: cell (919) 599-0310, office (650) 497-5841, rob.jackson@stanford.edu

Katharine Mach
Mach, a climate scientist, is part of a rural air quality research project, in collaboration with the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford, that examines wildfires’ effects on respiratory illness. Her research is focused on assessment of climate change risks and response options. From 2010 to 2015, Mach co-directed the scientific activities of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which focuses on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Mach is the director of the Stanford Environment Assessment Facility (SEAF) at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, a senior research scientist in Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and a visiting investigator at the Carnegie Institution for Science.
Contact: cell (650) 561-5640, office (650) 736-3556, mach@stanford.edu

Wildfire management

Rebecca Miller
Miller, a graduate student in Stanford’s Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, researches historic and current wildfire protection and prevention policies in California and their potential impacts on future wildfires in the state. She examines how federal, state and local governments in California respond to and prepare for wildfires.
Contact: cell (714) 393-5722, rkmiller@stanford.edu

Fire, air quality and public health

Kari Nadeau
Nadeau is one of the nation’s foremost experts in adult and pediatric asthma, a respiratory condition commonly triggered or exacerbated by wildfire smoke. She is the director of the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford and is an endowed professor under the Naddisy Family Foundation. She is part of a rural air quality research project, in collaboration with the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, that examines wildfires’ effects on respiratory illness.
Contact: cell (650) 867-4592, office (650) 724-6780, knadeau@stanford.edu

Sharon Chinthrajah
Chinthrajah is a pulmonologist and allergist who studies allergies and asthma and cares for patients who suffer from these diseases. She is a clinical associate professor in the divisions of allergy/immunology and pulmonary/critical care medicine at Stanford, and serves as director of the clinical translational research unit at the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research.
Contact: (650) 723-5227, schinths@stanford.edu

Mary Prunicki
Prunicki is a research scientist who has studied the impact of air pollution on the immune system for several years in Fresno, an area of consistently elevated air pollution.  Her research is currently focused on the health impacts of wildfires and prescribed burns.
Contact: prunicki@stanford.edu

Sayantani B. Sindher
Sindher is a pediatric and adult allergist who cares for patients with food and environmental allergies as well as asthma. She is a clinical assistant professor in the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Stanford University. In addition to seeing patients in her outpatient clinic, she is also involved in clinical research trials at the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research.
Contact: 650-724-6780, tina.sindher@stanford.edu

New tools for preventing wildfires

Eric Appel and Craig Criddle
Appel and Criddle have developed an environmentally benign hydrogel that can retain fire retardants on target fuels such as dry grass for at least 9 months. They’ve done small-scale trials in collaboration with Cal Fire and will do some large trials next fire season. Appel is a professor of materials science and engineering. Criddle is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
Contact: cell (562) 370-8779, eappel@stanford.edu / criddle@stanford.edu

Wildfire legislation

Bruce Cain
Cain is an expert on Western political issues, including the political context for wildfire policy and disaster response. Cain is a professor of political science, director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
Contact: cell (415) 336-0570, office (650) 725-1320, bcain@stanford.edu

Michael Wara
Wara’s research focuses on climate policy and regulation. He has provided expert testimony on wildfire legislation and has been quoted widely on issues related to wildfire regulation and liability. He is the director of Stanford’s Climate and Energy Research Program; a senior research scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment; a research fellow at the Program in Energy and Sustainable Development in Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; and a research fellow at the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance.
Contact: cell (415) 250-9730, michael.wara@stanford.edu

Additional Stanford experts can be found at https://experts.stanford.edu.

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