Sustainability & EJ Symposium 2026 Lightning Talks
Research Lightning Talks
The 2026 Sustainability and Environmental Justice Research Symposium brought together faculty, staff, and students from 60% of academic departments across Santa Clara University.
Explore five to ten minute lighting talks covering climate resilience, water access, pedagogical practices, local climate action and more below.
Advancing Sustainability Through Pedagogy
Chad Raphael - Using the Campus for Applied Learning about Sustainability and Justice: Promising Practices and Interdisciplinary Themes
Katy Bruchmann - The Campus as Lab: Leveraging Social Psychology for Sustainability
Won Jung Kim - Community-Engaged Research Projects in School Settings: Science Teachers’ Practices and Reflections
Labor and the Climate Economy
Victoria Wenxin Xie - Place-Based Green Industrial Policies and Labor Market Expectations
Stacey Ritter - Disclosure Changes Under Regulatory Nudge: Evidence from Topic Similarity Across Corporate
David C. Anastasiu - Seeing the Future: How AI Can Predict and Explain Disasters Before They Happen
Reflecting and Reimagining
Stefie Gan - Carbon Traces
Jeffrey Burkholder - Rethinking the Global
Allan Báez Morales - Innovating with Less for the Common Good
Agroecology and Climate Resilience
Maia Dedrick - MayaRoots: Crafting a phone application in support of Yucatán's innovative heritage agriculture
Qiuwen Li - Community-Centered Design for Climate Resilience: The NicaAgua App
Briana Guingona, Tanya Jain - Shifts in the Mid-Summer Drought Patterns Across Central America
Christopher Bacon, William A. Sundstrom - Continuity or transformative change: Assessing co-ops and smallholders' use of agroecology and diversified farming from 2014 to 2024 in Central America
Equitable Access to Water
Aria Amirbahman - A Multidisciplinary Sustainability Project to Provide Safe Drinking Water to a Rural Maasai Community in Southern Kenya
Chan Thai - Empowering Indigenous Communities Through Water Access
Iris Stewart-Frey - Water, Climate, and Justice in a Cadillac Desert named California
Gabrielle Henrich, Sophia Toribio - Agriculture and Groundwater Contamination in Domestic Wells of California’s Central Coast’s Rural Communities
Campus as a Living Laboratory
Sophia Kennedy, Samuel Waterman, Iris Yuh - California Climate Action Corps Fellowship: Mobilizing SCU to Reduce Food Waste and Address Student Food Insecurity
Grace Falci, Isabelle Pink - Analyzing Santa Clara University’s Food Procurement: Measuring Institutional Food System Sustainability, Transformation, and Change
Drew Rogers, Sophie Sharp, Eliana Aschheim - Reducing Waste Through Graduation Gown Reuse
Daniel Lowe, Olivia Imai, Gus Vaughan, Kelly Rickwa - Sustainability Training Program Proposal
Climate Action in the City of Santa Clara
Leonie Casper - Building Bridges as a Silicon Valley Power Sustainable Futures Post-baccalaureate Fellow
Gigi Jones - Stovetop Electrification in Santa Clara
Isabella Gomez - T.E.K. and Ecosystem Resilience: Implementing a Native Plants Landscaping Policy
Ximena Garcia-Isabelli - The Future of Heat Adaptation in Santa Clara in the Face of Climate Change