Penn Aspen Resilience Science Initiative
The Penn Aspen Resilience Science Initiative” (PARSI) will build the Adaptation Atlas, an integrated, scientifically-grounded framework that asks “what builds resilience, for whom, at what scale, and at what investment?” It will encompass a three-year campus-wide research program, drawing on faculty from across Penn’s twelve schools. Its multidisciplinary outputs will be embedded in the international institutions and policy processes where adaptation decisions are made, ensuring that the Atlas reaches the people who need it, in forms they can use, and timed to contribute directly to the GGA indicators work program, the G20, and the Second Global Stocktake at COP33. This project will be led by PWH Deputy Director Michael Weisberg.
Faculty Leads on this Project
Erol Akçay is a Professor of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a theoretical biologist interested in the evolution of complex biological and social organization. He works on how individuals with conflicting interests evolve to cooperate with each other. He has worked on systems varying from plant-microbe mutualisms to animal behavior and cultural evolution in humans. Dr. Akçay’s research has been published by Science, the American Naturalist, Nature Communications, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and more. Dr. Akçay’s lab is affiliated with the Evolution Cluster, the Warren Center for Network and Data Sciences, the Social and Cultural Evolution Working Group (SCEW), and MindCORE.
William W. Braham, PhD, FAIA, is Andrew Gordon professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, where he previously served as department chair and chair of the Faculty Senate, and is currently director of the MSD in Environmental Building Design and of the Center for Environmental Building + Design.
He studied civil and mechanical engineering at Princeton before working as a solar consultant with the Princeton Energy Group. He initially came to Penn to work with Don Prowler and Harrison Fraker on a multi-year DOE research project, “Teaching Passive Design in Architecture.” After completing the Master of Architecture he worked in New York as an architect for nearly a decade, eventually returning to Penn as Director of the Center for Environmental Design and Planning, while completing a PhD in Architecture.
He has worked on energy and architecture for over 40 years as a designer, consultant, researcher, and author of numerous articles and books. His research projects have featured the application of systems ecology to the built environment and the uses of building performance modelling, spanning from considerations of urban morphology to the metabolic effects of responsive building envelopes. His recent consulting projects include energy and carbon plans for the City of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania Health System, Nakashima Woodworkers, and the Chautauqua Institution, and building energy modelling for the Daikin Open Innovation Lab, Silicon Valley. He has collaborated with many amazing colleagues, most recently Dorit Aviv’s Thermal Architecture Lab and Henning Larsen on radiant cooling innovations.
Jennifer Pinto-Martin, MPH, PhD is Professor Emerita in the Biobehavioral Health Sciences Department in the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing with a secondary appointment in the Department of Epidemiology in the Perelman School of Medicine. She served as the ombuds for the University and the executive director of Penn’s Center for Public Health Initiatives. She also served as director of the Master of Public Health Program, Department Chair, and Chair of the University Faculty Senate. She was a part of Penn’s COVID Response Team and continues to be involved in all public health decisions related to the campus community.
Pinto-Martin has had over 20 years of continuous National Institutes of Health support for a longitudinal study of neonatal brain injury in low birthweight infants. Her primary research focus is the epidemiology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). She served for 12 years as the director and principal investigator of the Pennsylvania Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities Research and Epidemiology, one of six such centers funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the etiology of ASD.
Michael Weisberg is the Perry World House Deputy Director and Bess W. Heyman President’s Distinguished Professor of Philosophy. A climate diplomat, philosopher of science, climate policy researcher, and experienced academic leader, he has negotiated and achieved collective outcomes in the complex landscape of climate, ocean, and development issues at the highest levels of international diplomacy.
An expert on the climate needs of small island developing states, Weisberg currently serves as senior advisor to Jamaica’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and as an advisor to the Fiji and Palau negotiating teams at COP. Weisberg was a leading voice in the development of the “mosaic of solutions” for addressing loss and damage due to the adverse impacts of climate change, which led to major breakthroughs on the topic at COP27 and COP28. This framework was developed in collaboration with the Maldivian Government and the International Peace Institute, where he is a Non-resident Senior Advisor.
Weisberg serves as editor-in-chief of Biology and Philosophy and director of the Galápagos Education and Research Alliance. He is the author of Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World, co-author of the landmark photographic study Galápagos: Life in Motion, and a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Weisberg educates the next generation of environmental leaders in the classroom, at the negotiating table, and in the field, ensuring that their voices have maximal impact on addressing the climate crisis.