Thought Leadership 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, all of whom shared their latest research in the areas of water and food justice, resilience, Indigenous wisdom, climate action on campus, and more.
Explore five to ten minute lighting talks from a range of sustainability leaders below.
College of Arts and Sciences
Iris Stewart-Frey
Water, Climate, and Justice in a Cadillac Desert named California
Qiuwen Li
Community-Centered Design for Climate Resilience: The NicaAgua App
Chan Thai
Empowering Indigenous Communities Through Water Access
Stefie Gan
Carbon Traces
Katy Bruchmann
The Campus as Lab: Leveraging Social Psychology for Sustainability
Jeffrey Burkholder
Rethinking the Global
Maia Dedrick
MayaRoots: Crafting a phone application in support of Yucatán's innovative heritage agriculture
Chad Raphael
Using the Campus for Applied Learning about Sustainability and Justice: Promising Practices and Interdisciplinary Themes
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
Leavey School of Business
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
School of Education and Counseling Psychology
Won Jung Kim
Community-Engaged Research Projects in School Settings: Science Teachers’ Practices and Reflections
School of Engineering
David C. Anastasiu
Seeing the Future: How AI Can Predict and Explain Disasters Before They Happen
Aria Amirbahman
A Multidisciplinary Sustainability Project to Provide Safe Drinking Water to a Rural Maasai Community in Southern Kenya
Gabrielle Henrich, Sophia Toribio
Agriculture and Groundwater Contamination in Domestic Wells of California’s Central Coast’s Rural Communities
Briana Guingona, Tanya Jain
Shifts in the Mid-Summer Drought Patterns Across Central America
Allan Báez Morales
Innovating with Less for the Common Good
Center for Sustainability
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
Sophia Kennedy, Samuel Waterman, Iris Yuh
California Climate Action Corps Fellowship: Mobilizing SCU to Reduce Food Waste and Address Student Food Insecurity
Drew Rogers, Sophie Sharp, Eliana Aschheim
Reducing Waste Through Graduation Gown Reuse
Daniel Lowe, Olivia Imai, Gus Vaughan, Kelly Rickwa
Sustainability Training Program Proposal
Grace Falci, Isabelle Pink
Analyzing Santa Clara University’s Food Procurement: Measuring Institutional Food System Sustainability, Transformation, and Change
Leonie Casper
Building Bridges as a Silicon Valley Power Sustainable Futures Post-baccalaureate Fellow