Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI)

Director

Stephen W. Pacala, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Executive Committee

Michael A. Celia, Civil and Environmental Engineering

William L. Howarth, English

Emmanuel H. Kreike, History

Simon A. Levin, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

François M. Morel, Geosciences

Stephen W. Pacala, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Daniel I. Rubenstein, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Burton H. Singer, Woodrow Wilson School

Peter Singer, University Center for Human Values

Thomas Spiro, Chemistry

Bess B. Ward, Geosciences

Senior Research Scientist

Robert H. Williams

Research Scientist

Eric D. Larson

Ex-Officio Member

H. Vincent Poor, School of Engineering and Applied Science

Anne-Marie Slaughter, Woodrow Wilson School

 

The Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI) promotes and coordinates interdisciplinary research in the environmental field and provides undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral education and training in environmental policy, science, and technology.

Graduate Program

The goal of the PEI graduate program is to broaden the educational perspective of doctoral students working on environmental research. Science and engineering students are offered an opportunity to expand their disciplinary focus by exploring the policy aspects of their environmental research. Similarly, students in the humanities and social sciences may spend a year studying environmental science related to their research topic. The PEI graduate program encourages interdisciplinary collaboration among faculty and students, and helps forge links among the many departments in the sciences and humanities involved in the study of the environment. Students are based in a home department, but they participate in research and teaching in environmental science, technology, and policy with faculty members from across the campus.

The central component of the PEI graduate program is the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy Program, known as PEI-STEP. This two-year program enables participating graduate students to add a policy dimension to their basic science or technology work. PEI-STEP students write an independent paper on their policy research, which is the equivalent of a chapter in the thesis. Students who complete PEI-STEP are awarded the Graduate Certificate in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Areas of particular strength in which students may wish to concentrate their graduate education include biodiversity and conservation, biogeochemical cycles, environmental history, environmental science and policy, global change, and molecular geochemistry.

Graduate programs with substantial environmental content can be found in the following departments and programs: atmospheric and oceanic sciences, chemical engineering, chemistry, civil and environmental engineering, ecology and evolutionary biology, geosciences, mechanical and aerospace engineering, and the STEP Program of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, among others. Please contact these programs directly for further information.

Research

PEI fosters leading interdisciplinary research in the environmental field through its 70 affiliated faculty members distributed among all the departments in the University and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. These faculty members share a common interest in advancing environmental research and teaching at Princeton and help to promote environmental programs at the University.

Princeton graduate students interested in environmental research have the opportunity to participate in one of several multidisciplinary projects administered by PEI. These projects, which are described below, bring together the expertise of faculty and students from departments across campus to address environmental problems of critical importance. These centers receive long-term support from government agencies and private concerns and offer opportunities for exciting thesis projects. Participating graduate students thus help bring about solutions to real-world problems while furthering their scientific training.

The Princeton Climate Center (PCC), a part of the Cooperative Institute for Climate Science (CICS), was established to facilitate research between scientists from Princeton and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory to understand and predict climate and human impacts on it, including studies of the climate system, climate variability and change, biogeochemical cycles and climate, and climate prediction. Funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), it also focuses on the co-evolution of society and the environment, including studies of climate impacts, impacts of technological mitigation solutions, and implications for public policy and management. The PCC grew out of the former Carbon Modeling Consortium, which was established in 1995 through a grant from the NOAA, to develop an integrated carbon system model.

The Center for Environmental Bioinorganic Chemistry (CEBIC) is an Environmental Molecular Science Institute funded by the National Science Foundation. It brings together the complementary expertise of bioinorganic chemists, geochemists, oceanographers, and environmental microbiologists (principally at Princeton, Rutgers, and the University of California) to elucidate the molecular mechanisms that determine the function, fate, and effect of trace metals in the environment.

The Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI) is a long-term partnership started in September 2000 with British Petroleum and the Ford Motor Company to find a solution to the greenhouse gas problem. The goal is to identify the most credible paths to capture and sequester a large fraction of the carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.

The Center for Biocomplexity (CBC), funded by the National Science Foundation, seeks to understand the mechanisms responsible for the homeostatic processes that regulate climate and maintain the physical and chemical environment that sustains our life support systems. Through a collaboration among ecologists, biogeochemists, and hydrologists, the CBC aims to understand how macroscopic properties at scales of ocean basins and forested regions emerge from the interactions between organisms and their environments.

In addition, PEI’s Energy Group provides a major focus for energy and environmental research at Princeton, focusing on energy and carbon management.

Admissions

Candidates for admission should apply to a regular department and list PEI as the interdepartmental program of choice on the Graduate School application. The degree granted will be from the department in which the student is enrolled. To apply to the PEI-STEP Program, candidates will develop a policy proposal with the assistance of the PEI-STEP adviser at the end of the first or second year. Candidates must also fulfill the requirements of the home department.

Financial Aid

Through the PEI-STEP Program, PEI offers half financial support for two years, normally the second and third years. Research or teaching assistantships, and teaching and travel funds for meetings and conferences are also available.

Interested graduate students from any science or engineering department may be supported to serve as preceptors or laboratory assistants in the environmental studies undergraduate courses, ENV 201 and ENV 202.

Course Work

PEI students are encouraged to include in their program of study graduate courses in environmental topics from among those offered by the affiliated programs listed above, other departments or programs, and PEI graduate program courses. In particular, PEI-STEP students must take WWS 584, “The Use of Science in Environmental Policy,” and two other courses in the STEP Program.

Seminars and Colloquia

In addition to courses, students attend colloquia related to their interests. PEI offers a weekly faculty session, a monthly graduate seminar series, and a yearly poster session to foster interdisciplinary exchanges and encourage a spirit of cohesiveness among program students. The seminar series is conducted by Princeton faculty, students, and outside speakers. Other departments also sponsor seminars on environmentally related topics over the course of the academic year.

Dissertation Committee and Advisers

It is suggested that the dissertation committee include at least one PEI faculty member from a department other than the student’s home department.

Courses

The following courses, usually offered by faculty affiliated with PEI, are listed to indicate their substantial environmental science or policy content.

ENV 524 Environmental Issues Seminar (also GEO 524, CEE 573)

François M. M. Morel

Current problems in environmental sciences. Element cycles; geochemistry-biotic interactions, human impacts on the environment. A new topic is chosen every semester. Recent topics have included: the global carbon cycle, alternative energies, biodiversity, environmental ethics, genetically modified organisms, the effects of globalization on the environment, the media and the environment, restoration ecology, the humanities’ influence on environmental science and policy, and ecological design and planning: architecture, landscape, and urbanism.

ENV 544 Metals in Biology (see CHM 544)

ENV 587 Ecohydrology (see CEE 587)

Pertinent Courses in Allied Departments

Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics

507 Basic Numerical Methods for Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations

Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

527 Atmospheric Radiative Transfer

537 Atmospheric Chemistry

547 Atmospheric Thermodynamics and Convection

571 Introduction to Geophysical Fluid Dynamics

572 Atmospheric and Oceanic Wave Dynamics

573 Physical Oceanography

575 Numerical Prediction of the Atmosphere and Ocean

577 Weather and Climate Dynamics

578 Chemical Oceanography

Chemical Engineering

504 Chemical Reactor Engineering

505 Advanced Heat and Mass Transfer

508 Numerical Methods for Engineers

522 Colloidal Dispersions I

Chemistry

507 Solid-State Chemistry

522 Advanced Inorganic Chemistry

523 Coordination Chemistry

539 Introduction to Chemical Instrumentation

Civil and Environmental Engineering

571 Environmental Chemistry

576 Water Quality Modeling and Analysis

577 Data Analysis and Modeling for the Environmental Sciences

581 Theory of Groundwater Flow

582 Advanced Groundwater Modeling

586 Physical Hydrology

599, 600 Special Topics in Environmental Engineering and Water Resources

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

504 Fundamental Concepts in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior II

515 Conservation Biology

519 Theoretical Ecology

521 Tropical Ecology

522 Colloquium on the Biology of Populations

533 Topics in Ecology

Economics

523, 524 Public Finance I and II

Geosciences

500 Field Geology

523 Geomicrobiology

543 Rock Fracture

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

306 Mathematics in Engineering II*

501 Mathematical Methods of Engineering Analysis I

502 Mathematical Methods of Engineering Analysis II

527 Physics of Gases

531 Combustion

571 Introduction to Energy and Environmental Problems

579, 580 Advanced Topics in Energy and Environment I and II

*May be used to satisfy a graduate-level mathematics requirement.

Molecular Biology

504 Cellular Biochemistry

Operations Research and Financial Engineering

522 Linear Optimization

Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

511c Microeconomic Analysis (accelerated)

521 Domestic Politics

582b Topics in Economics: Environmental and Natural Resource Economics

584 The Use of Science in Environmental Policy

585, 586 Topics in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy

586b Topics in STEP: Conservation of Endangered Species and Ecosystems