Jaramillo to join Andrew Carnegie Fellows Forum on climate action

On Wednesday, December 8, Engineering and Public Policy’s Professor Paulina Jaramillo will join fellow Andrew Carnegie Fellows and the Carnegie Corporation for a virtual panel discussion on climate change. The discussion will address complex considerations highlighted by the recent 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), including the human impact of climate change, new technologies to address it, and global energy needs.

Panelists will discuss new hurdles identified through ongoing climate action. There are new relationships to explore, such as the relationship between green capitalism, clean energy, and social justice. Potential is present to strengthen cooperation at an international scale and global governance may play a major role in ensuring equitable outcomes from geoengineering efforts to combat climate change. And questions still abound—especially in countries where many still lack access to electricity—regarding how we can develop sustainable and equitable modern energy systems.

Jaramillo, Co-Director of Carnegie Mellon’s Green Design Institute, has spent much of her career exploring issues like these. She has researched the life cycles of energy systems with an emphasis on climate change impact and mitigation. Her current research is putting new tools in the hands of energy decision makers in the US as they prepare for increased demand and more intense climatic extremes in the coming decades.

She also co-lead a team that has created low-cost sensors to measure air pollution. Jaramillo is working to create an international network of scientists and stakeholders across Europe, North America, Africa, and India who can share data and solutions, called the Clean Air Monitoring and Solutions Network (CAMS-Net). As part of this international collaboration, she’s helping create a network for monitoring air pollution specifically in Africa titled AfriqAir, which so far spans 50 sensors in mostly urban environments across 11 countries.

Jaramillo’s fellow panelists include Sikina Jinnah of the University of California, Santa Cruz and Thea Riofrancos of Providence College, and the event will be hosted by TIME’s Senior Correspondent Justin Worland.