Appendix C
Workshop Planning Committee Biographical Sketches

Anjali Mahendra (Chair) is the Director of Global Research at World Resources Institute’s (WRI’s) Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. She is an internationally known expert on the relationship between urban development and climate change, experienced in leading research to inform policy and practice. She led WRI’s flagship World Resources Report series “Towards a More Equal City” (2015–2021), exploring how growing cities can ensure equitable access to urban services and infrastructure, while solving citywide environmental challenges and increasing economic opportunity for all. She has developed resources on Inclusive Climate Action Planning for C40 Cities that are currently used to guide planning and train city officials worldwide. Dr. Mahendra has taught courses and authored numerous publications on urban transportation and land-use policies, their public health impacts, their economic and equity impacts, and their role in climate change mitigation and adaptation. She led research for WRI’s India office prior to her global role. Prior to WRI, she led projects for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Transportation Research Board (TRB), U.S. state and local agencies, and international organizations as a senior consultant at ICF International and the World Bank. Dr. Mahendra served on TRB’s Committee on Transportation in Developing Countries from 2006 to 2012 and Committee on Congestion Pricing from 2011 to 2017. Her academic training includes master’s degrees (city planning, transportation) and a Ph.D. (urban and regional planning) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Hariharasubramanian Annamalai is currently a senior researcher and Associate Director of the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC), University of Hawaii. IPRC, with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region, seeks to understand the climate system and how it may respond to human activity by conducting experiments with computer simulation models and by analyzing the many direct and remote observations related to climate. His areas of research expertise include understanding processes responsible for climate variability and climate change over the Asian-Australian monsoon region, and over Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. Besides understanding how the El Niño-Southern Oscillation–induced teleconnections impact South Asian monsoon precipitation, and their expected impact on the monsoon in a warmer planet, his research focuses on elucidating sources of climate model errors in representing tropical climate and its variability. Prior to joining IPRC, he received a Ph.D. in meteorology from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and worked as a postdoctoral scientist in the Center of Global Atmospheric Modeling, University of Reading, United Kingdom.

Casey Brown is a Provost Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an adjunct associate research scientist at Columbia University. He is an internationally recognized expert in water resources systems analysis and climate risk assessment. His primary research interest is the development of analytical methods for improving the use of scientific observations and data in decisionmaking, with a focus on climate and water resources, and he has worked extensively on projects around the world in this regard. He has received the Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering, the National Science Foundation

CAREER award, the Huber Research Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Climate Science Award from the California Department of Water Resources. He currently serves on the Steering Committees of the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation, World Wildlife Fund Basin Report, and City Water Resilience Framework. He also consults for the World Bank, private sector, state agencies, and municipalities and serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on Independent Scientific Review of Everglades Restoration Progress. Dr. Brown earned a doctorate in environmental engineering science from Harvard University.

Virginia Burkett is the Chief Scientist for Climate and Land Use Change, International Programs at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Previously, she served as the USGS Chief Scientist for Global Change Research and as the USGS Associate Director for Climate and Land Use Change. Burkett was appointed co-chair of the U.S. Global Change Research Program in 2016 and served as chair during 2017–2019. Burkett is the United States’ alternate representative to the Executive Committee of the international Group on Earth Observations, which coordinates the collection and delivery of satellite and in situ Earth observations from 108 nations. Prior to her federal service, Burkett was Secretary/Director of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, where she had formerly served as Deputy Secretary. She has also directed the Louisiana Coastal Zone Management Program and served as Assistant Director of the Louisiana Geological Survey. Burkett has published extensively on the topics of global change and low-lying coastal zones. She was a Lead Author of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third, Fourth, and Fifth Assessment Reports and the IPCC Technical Paper on Water. She was a Lead Author of the First, Second, and Third U.S. National Climate Assessments and she served on the Federal Steering Committee for the Fourth National Climate Assessment (2018). Burkett received her doctoral degree in forestry from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, in 1996.

Melissa D. Ho is Senior Vice President for Freshwater and Food at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in the United States, where she leads and supports WWF’s initiatives focusing on regenerative and resilient food systems and the conservation of freshwater ecosystems for people, nature, and climate. Dr. Ho has more than 25 years of experience as a scientist, policy advisor, and development professional, working at the intersection of water and agriculture and the connections to health, energy, climate, and national security. She has served in both U.S. government bilateral development aid agencies. She oversaw a $1.5 billion portfolio of infrastructure investments in West Africa, primarily related to agriculture, irrigation, and energy, as part of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. She also served as the Technical Division Director and Senior Advisor in the Bureau for Food Security at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Earlier in her career, Dr. Ho developed and implemented the first agriculture water management strategy and grant portfolio for a major foundation. She has also served in the U.S. Congress in various capacities. Dr. Ho’s academic training includes a Ph.D. in plant physiology from the Pennsylvania State University, an M.Sc. in soil science from the University of California, Davis, and a B.Sc. in environmental systems from Cornell University.

Sheila Jasanoff is a Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies (STS) at the Harvard Kennedy School. A pioneer in the social sciences, she explores the role of science and technology in the law, politics, and policy of modern democracies. Her books include The Fifth Branch, Science at the Bar, Designs on Nature, The Ethics of Invention, and Can Science Make Sense of Life? She founded and directs the STS program at Harvard; previously, she was founding chair of the STS Department at Cornell. She has held distinguished visiting professorships at

leading universities in Europe, Asia, Australia, and the United States. Jasanoff served on the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences Board of Directors and as President of the Society for Social Studies of Science. Her honors include the Social Science Research Council’s Hirschman prize, the Humboldt Foundation’s Reimar-Lüst award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, foreign member of the British Academy and the Royal Danish Academy, and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She holds A.B., J.D., and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard, and honorary doctorates from the Universities of Twente and Liège.

Katharine Mach is a professor at the University of Miami’s (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science and a faculty scholar at the UM Abess Center. Her research assesses climate change risks and response options to address increased flooding, extreme heat, wildfire, and other hazards. Her work focuses on innovating approaches to evidence-based adaptation decisions. Dr. Mach was previously a Senior Research Scientist at Stanford University and the Director of the Stanford Environment Assessment Facility. Before that, she co-directed the scientific activities of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dr. Mach is a lead author for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and a chapter lead for the U.S. Fifth National Climate Assessment. Mach is the 2020 recipient of the Piers Sellers Prize for world-leading contribution to solution-focused climate research. She serves as a co-editor in chief for Climate Risk Management, an editorial board member for Oxford Open Climate Change, and an advisory committee member for the Aspen Global Change Institute and the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment. Dr. Mach earned her doctorate in biological sciences from Stanford University.