School Notes: School of the Environment
July/August 2011

Students named Sabin Fellows

Seven students at the environment school have been named Andrew Sabin International Environmental Fellows and will receive awards of up to $35,000 to continue their studies. Paulo Quadri Barba, Mexico; Lakshmi Krishnan, India; Jing Ma, China; Munjed Murad, Jordan; Kavita Sharma, India; Kanchan Shrestha, Nepal; and Shiyue Wang, China; were selected for the fellowships by the school’s Tropical Resources Institute and will receive $20,000 for tuition in their second year of study and $15,000 after graduation to pursue environmental careers in their native land. The fellowships are funded by the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation in East Hampton, New York, which supports nonprofits involved in environmental protection.

Study focuses on urban clusters

A three-year, $1.3 million grant from NASA will allow researchers from Yale and other institutions to use satellite imagery to detect and measure the growth in China and India of urban clusters, urban areas linked economically, spatially, or by their population. Over the next two decades, China is expected to create at least 30 cities, each with 1 million residents, and India is on track to add 26 cities of the same size. The combined urban population in China and India is expected to grow by more than 700 million.

The researchers will identify changes in land cover that have occurred in urban clusters; they will also examine satellite data for regional clusters going back to 1992 and analyze it with economic, demographic, and policy data they plan to collect. The team, which includes researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and TERI University in India, will also collect data from mayors, planning offices, and real estate development companies, as well as data on financial investments, GDP activity, and population, and then will develop empirical models to determine the implications of policy decisions.

Student awarded Trudeau scholarship

A first-year doctoral student at the environment school is one of 14 Canadian and foreign scholars to be awarded a $180,000 Trudeau Scholarship. Sébastien Jodoin, who is from Montreal, is conducting research on the role of human rights in enhancing the legitimacy of conservation initiatives; in guiding, supporting, and constraining climate-change policy-making; and in the formulation of socially responsible policies for extractive industries that operate in developing countries. Trudeau Scholarships, awarded by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, are granted to students studying the social sciences and humanities and issues related to the environment, international affairs, responsible citizenship, and human rights and dignity.