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Newsha Ajami Joins EESA as Chief Development Officer for Research3 min read

by Christina Procopiou on January 21, 2022

Announcements

Newsha Ajami, a recognized scientific researcher and environmental policy expert, has joined Berkeley Lab’s Earth and Environmental Sciences Area (EESA) as the Chief Development Officer for Research. In this role, Ajami will work to advance new and strategic partnerships, projects, initiatives, and impact within EESA.

Ajami joins EESA from Stanford University where she was the founding director of the Urban Water Policy program and a senior research scholar at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment. She is a leading expert in smart cities, resilient infrastructure, sustainable water resource management, and the water-energy-food nexus, and a hydrologist who uses data science principles to study the human and policy dimensions of natural systems in her own research. 

“Newsha’s efforts throughout the years have been interdisciplinary and impact-focused,” said Jens Birkholzer, Director of the Energy Geosciences Division in EESA. “She has particularly engaged deeply on California challenges through partnerships with a range of industry, community, non-profit, university, and state agency groups. Her approach and expertise are well aligned with EESA’s strategic directions. We are thrilled to welcome her to EESA”.

EESA is a premier research organization that is home to hundreds of scientists focused on developing new insights and capabilities to observe and predict wildly diverse Earth system interactions that occur across scales and compartments, how they change with disturbance, and their impact on resources such as water, critical elements, infrastructure, and energy. 

Ajami brings a passion for public policy and interdisciplinary research to her new role at Berkeley Lab, an organization founded on the belief that the biggest scientific challenges are best addressed by teams. As part of the EESA Executive Team, she will spearhead the cultivation and development of new partnerships and research programs associated with a broad range of sponsors.   

“I am delighted to join EESA in this new role which combines my passion for developing and leading interdisciplinary and impact-driven research initiatives across both water and energy sectors,” Ajami said. “I can’t wait to further enable cutting-edge scientific exploration that can simultaneously advance strategies for climate adaptation and mitigation. The depth and breadth of talent at EESA and its collaborative culture are quite unique, and I look forward to cultivating broader internal and external strategic partnerships to expand the reach of the research that is being conducted at the lab. ”

Ajami was a gubernatorial appointee to the Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board, a regulatory body that oversees the protection of California’s water resources in the Bay Area, and is currently a mayoral appointee to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. She is a member of the National Academies Board on Water Science and Technology and serves as a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute.​​ She received her doctorate in civil and environmental engineering from the University of California Irvine; a master’s in hydrology and water resources from the University of Arizona; and a bachelor’s in civil engineering from Tehran Polytechnic. Ajami has received many prestigious honors, including the National Science Foundation award for AMS Science and Policy Colloquium and the ICSC-World Laboratory Hydrologic Science.

 

News & Events

Chun Chang Places Second in Annual Berkeley Lab Pitch Competition3 min read

January 18, 2023

Commercializing Berkeley Lab inventions is an important part of the Lab’s mission, and one that requires strong communication skills. For example, Lab inventors need to be able to pitch their ideas to external partners and potential funders.  The annual Berkeley Lab Pitch Competition occurred on October 27, 2022 and is a part of an entrepreneurship…

EESA Scientists Collaborate With Universities to bring Environmental Science Research Opportunities and Training to Students Underrepresented in STEM3 min read

January 13, 2023

  EESA researchers are collaborators in three of the 41 projects awarded in December by DOE through its Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) initiative.  RENEW aims to build foundations for research at institutions that have been historically underrepresented in the Office of Science (SC) research portfolio. The initiative provides opportunities for undergraduate and…

New Report Explores Revolutionary Environmental Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure5 min read

January 10, 2023

In a collaborative effort between the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) and DOE’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, as well as with community experts, the Artificial Intelligence for Earth System Predictability (AI4ESP) workshop was held from October through December 2021. BER developed the process as the Model-Experiment paradigm, or ModEx, and a report released this fall outlines the key takeaways of last year’s event.

A Q&A With Postdoc Kunxiaoja Yuan3 min read

January 4, 2023

  Kunxiaojia Yuan received her Bachelor’s of Engineering in remote sensing and Ph.D. in geographic information engineering from Wuhan University. She is a postdoctoral researcher in EESA, with a research focus on global carbon, energy, and water cycle analysis and model evaluation using machine learning and causal inference. What motivated you to pursue a postdoc…

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