Meet the faculty teams selected to host a 2026 SCALES Postdoctoral Fellow. The inaugural cohort of fellows will join Duke University in August 2026.
Beyond Avoided Damages: Linking Risk, Behavior, and Finance in Climate Resilience Planning
Primary Mentor: Yichun Fan (Nicholas School of the Environment)
Co-Mentors: Mark Borsuk (Pratt School of Engineering), Lydia Olander (Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability), Emma Rasiel (Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, Economics)
Focal Area(s): Climate Policy & Finance; Climate & Community Resilience
Project summary: With intensifying climate risks, hundreds of billions of dollars are needed to finance climate resilience infrastructure in the US. Traditional approaches to evaluating such investments focus narrowly on avoided damages, overlooking feedbacks among infrastructure, behavior, and finance that can create economic opportunities and expand public and private capacity for adaptation finance.
This SCALES Fellow will lead an interdisciplinary research agenda integrating economics, engineering, environmental science, and public-private partnerships to help communities value and finance resilience infrastructure. Focusing on flood protection systems, the project will quantify how resilience investments influence not only direct risk reduction but also behavioral responses in real estate markets. By linking these dynamics to local fiscal outcomes, the Fellow will assess how such investments affect property-tax revenues, debt capacity, and the potential for innovative financial instruments, such as resilience bonds and parametric insurance, to mobilize capital.
Working with the Department of Economics, the Fellow will develop and pilot new teaching content on resilience finance, bringing this topic into Duke’s undergraduate economics curriculum for the first time and then extending it to courses in other schools and programs. The project will serve as an early pilot for ResileLab, Duke’s emerging climate data and modeling platform, and align with the insurance initiatives of CIRCAD and Duke CLIR Victoria Salinas’s work to strengthen community financing strategies. Together, these research and teaching efforts advance Climate Commitment priorities in Climate Policy and Finance and in Community Resilience, fulfilling the SCALES program’s goal of translating interdisciplinary research into actionable solutions.
SCALES Fellowship in Climate Change and Noncommunicable Diseases
Primary Mentor: Nishad Jayasundara (Nicholas School of the Environment)
Co-Mentors: Mercedes Bravo (Duke Global Health Institute), Liyin He (Nicholas School of the Environment), Heather Stapleton (Nicholas School of the Environment), Christina Wyatt (Duke University School of Medicine)
Focal Area(s): Climate & Health; Environmental & Climate Justice; Climate Science & Technology; Climate & Community Resilience
Project summary: Rising temperatures driven by climate change pose a major global health threat, yet the mechanisms linking heat exposure to noncommunicable diseases (NCDs)—particularly cardio-kidney-metabolic diseases (CKMDs)—remain poorly understood. This proposal aims to address this gap through structured and integrative mentoring designed to cultivate a future leader in climate and health, fostering interdisciplinary inquiry, research capacity, and skills in translating findings into actionable solutions.
Led by Dr. Nishad Jayasundara, with co-mentors Drs. Mercedes Bravo, Liyin He, Heather Stapleton, and Christina Wyatt, the fellowship integrates expertise in environmental health, medicine, and climate data science, applying artificial intelligence and machine learning as analytical tools. Hosted within Duke’s Environmental Exposure and Kidney Health (EEKH) working group, the SCALES fellow will have the flexibility to refine, expand, and innovate across two interdisciplinary aims:
1) Quantify associations between heat exposure and cardio-kidney-metabolic disease using North Carolina electronic health records, assessing the modifying effects of air quality and greenspace; and 2) Evaluate how occupational heat and chemical exposures jointly influence firefighter kidney health using biomarker and exposure modeling approaches.
In parallel, the fellow will receive guided mentorship to strengthen climate fluency through teaching, research translation, and community engagement. Leadership roles in EEKH (co-lead Jayasundara) and the DGHI Climate and Global Health Initiative (co-lead Bravo), active conference participation, leading workshops, and engaging in skill training will promote professional growth. Through immersive mentoring and high-impact research, the SCALES Fellowship will establish a leader poised to transform understanding and action at the intersection of climate, health, data, and equity.
Quantifying the extent, hydrologic impact, and solutions to wildfire-driven forest loss in the western U.S.
Primary Mentor: Jacob Levine (Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, Biology)
Co-Mentors: Tong Qiu (Nicholas School of the Environment); Martin Doyle (Nicholas School of the Environment and Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability); Nathaniel Chaney (Pratt School of Engineering)
Focal Area(s): Climate Policy & Finance; Climate Science & Technology; Climate & Community Resilience
Project summary: The size, frequency, and severity of wildfires are increasing with climate change, driving rapid conversion of forests to shrublands across the western U.S. Yet we lack an integrated understanding of the extent, drivers, consequences, and potential solutions to this ‘shrubification’ of western forests. In particular, the hydrologic impact of forest conversion remains underappreciated—long term shifts in evapotranspiration have the potential to alter both local climate and the magnitude and variability of streamflow, with important consequences for water markets and rights in a region facing increased water scarcity.
We propose an interdisciplinary project that bridges ecology, hydrology and economic policy to address this urgent climate challenge. The project, which will be led and co-designed by the SCALES fellow, comprises three aims: (i) quantify the current extent of postfire forest conversion and its impact on key hydrologic dynamics, (ii) develop predictive models to quantify shrubification risk and guide targeted forest management, and (iii) evaluate the implications of forest loss for water markets and identify potential policy solutions. In addressing these aims, the fellow will develop new tools to assist managers, outline actionable policy solutions, and make key research advances.
Our mentoring team, spanning ecology (Levine), remote sensing and vegetation dynamics (Qiu), hydrology and computational modeling (Chaney), and resource economics and policy (Doyle) is uniquely suited to support this work and the fellow’s professional development. Complementary teaching and engagement activities, including an undergraduate Wildfires and Society course and a Climate+ data-science project, will extend the fellow’s impact across campus and beyond.
Justice-Forward Carbon Removal: Governance, Siting, and Equity Across Kenya, Brazil, and India
Primary Mentor: Celina Scott-Buechler (Sanford School of Public Policy)
Co-Mentor: Subhrendu Pattanayak (Sanford School of Public Policy)
Focal Area(s): Environmental & Climate Justice
Project summary: The SCALES Postdoctoral Fellow will co-lead a program on justice-forward governance of carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Mentored by Scott-Buechler (primary) and Pattanayak (co-mentor), the fellow will (i) co-design the research strategy; (ii) select a flagship focus—one CDR pathway and one country among Kenya, Brazil, or India; and (iii) coordinate partners to coproduce decision-relevant outputs. Day to day, the fellow will supervise student researchers, convene stakeholders, steward Participatory CDR Atlas data with appropriate access controls, and lead open-access publications and policy briefs.
The project closes the gap between technical siting and justice-centered governance. With partners in Kenya, Brazil, and India, the team will deliver: (a) a Participatory CDR Atlas linking technical potential to politically defensible siting; (b) pathway- and country-specific governance option menus (consent, benefit-sharing, MRV, liability/redress); and (c) country governance dossiers. Building on 2025 ClimateWorks work (geospatial meta-analysis, legal/policy mapping, literature reviews, national convenings), the fellow will integrate spatial/MCDA with qualitative co-design, legal/policy inventory, and economic/implementation assessment to test what institutions can administer, at what cost, and with what distributional consequences.
Professional growth will be anchored by an Individual Development Plan, regular mentor meetings, and leadership in managing an engagement budget, supervising RAs, and representing Duke in partner briefings. Teaching contributions may include a cross-listed course using live Atlas materials, a Climate+/Bass team, and student practica. We will leverage two capacity building networks to accelerate ethical, in-country collaboration: the South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE) and the Environment for Development Initiative (EfD), which provide vetted partners, early-career scholars, and policy venues aligned with our co-production model.