Team

Postdoctoral Fellow | Ekaterina (Kath) Landgren
 

Starting in Fall 2025, Ekaterina (Kath) Landgren will be a Stanford Doerr School Dean's Sustainability Leaders Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research investigates how social dynamics among citizens, politicians, and media affect the actual and perceived popularity of climate policies. In her work, she employs mathematical models grounded in empirical data. Prior to Stanford, she was a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. Ekaterina holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University and a BSc from Brown University, where she double majored in Applied Mathematics and Philosophy. She enjoys calligraphy, language learning, and weightlifting.

PhD student | Sarah Fendrich

Sarah is interested in the design and evaluation of decision support systems for local and regional-scale climate adaptation. Her research aims to explore the social and cognitive processes through which decision support systems — both digital decision support tools and the activities of regional climate resilience networks — shape adaptation planning and implementation, organizational learning, and environmental outcomes. She is specifically interested in supporting more adaptive and integrated water resources management. Sarah’s current work focuses on better understanding the collaborative landscape of federal decision support activities using social network analysis, as well as the decision-making and planning processes of local stormwater managers in coastal communities across the U.S. using a mixed-methods approach, including surveys, interviews, and document analysis.Sarah holds a BA in cognitive neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to coming to Stanford, she worked on health care innovation and equity research at the Penn Medicine Nudge Unit and the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics.

Directed Study Student | Jason Sun 

Jason is a second year MBA/MS E-IPER student at Stanford Graduate School of Business. His research project focuses on the viability of using monetary incentives and gamification to drive mass behavior change in the household waste sorting to reduce downstream processing costs and emissions. Prior to Stanford, he worked at Apple as a Global Supply Manager on iPhone Enclosures and as a Knowledge Analyst in the Design-to-Value Labs at McKinsey. He holds a BS from Northwestern University in Mechanical Engineering and Economics. Outside of school, he loves skiing, reading, and make elaborate side quests in life.

PhD student | Griffin Colaizzi
 

Griffin is a doctoral researcher at Northeastern University, specializing in collective action. His research focuses on identifying how psychological factors—such as empathy and moral obligations to future others—can drive sustainable and prosocial behaviors. Griffin has extensive experience conducting behavioral research, utilizing diverse experimental and analytical approaches to explore effective strategies for promoting sustainability and collective action. Griffin earned his B.A. at Williams College and his M.S. at Northeastern University where he is a PhD candidate.

PhD student | Hannah Prawitz
 

Hannah Prawitz is a PhD student at the Max Plank Institute of Geoanthropology (Jena, Germany), the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (Potsdam, Germany), and the University of Potsdam (Potsdam, Germany). She is also a member of the international Earth Resilience and Sustainability Initiative (ERSI). Hannah has an interdisciplinary background with degrees in Biophysics (Bachelor of Sciences), Social Sciences (Bachelor of Arts), Integrated Natural Resource Management (Master of Sciences), and Urban Ecosystem Sciences (Master of Sciences). Her research focuses on understanding and modeling large-scale social-ecological systems. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, Hannah is interested in understanding how both formal and informal institutions shape human-environment interactions and can facilitate or hinder sustainable transformations.

PhD student | Jessica Geiger 

Jessica Geiger is a political science PhD candidate at Claremont Graduate University and the recipient of the DPE Research Assistant of the Year award. She has also earned an MA in Public Policy & Evaluation and the Inclusive Excellence in College Teaching Certificate from Claremont Graduate University. She is interested in public opinion, political behavior, political psychology, and environmental justice. Her work primarily focuses on how the interaction between identities and contextual factors can shape attitudes toward climate change, mitigation policies, and environmental policies. Finally, she is also interested in how institutions and policy-making can lead to environmental injustices and shape inequitable policy outcomes.

PhD student | Zoe Horlacher 

Zoe Horlacher is a third-year PhD student visiting from the Centre for Social Data Science (SODAS) at University of Copenhagen. She holds an MSc in Cognitive and Decision Sciences from the University College London and an MA (Honours) in Sustainable Development from the University of St Andrews. Her research lies at the intersection of environmental psychology and social data science, with a particular focus on using big data and natural language processing to examine cross-cultural perceptions of nature. Her doctoral project investigates large-scale differences in environmental beliefs and behaviours across cultures, including variations in personality, emotions, and policy support.