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Successful Interdisciplinary Research: Case Studies from the Earth Institute

Prepared and Written by Kaitlyn Coomes, Earth Institute Director’s Office Intern

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................... 1

BEST PRACTICES ............................................................................................................................................... 3

CHALLENGES FACED ......................................................................................................................................... 4

INDIVIDUAL PROJECTS...................................................................................................................................... 5

APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ............................................................................................................. 20

Introduction In 2015, the UN published the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, defining a plan of action for the planet to move towards a more sustainable and prosperous future for people and environment. The targets that were outlined in this document - prosperity for all people, increasing sustainability and preventing further degradation of the planet, and peaceful and just societies - by the complexity of their nature, necessitate the crossing of boundaries between the economic, social, and technological disciplines to devise solutions.1,2 Researchers with experience working on sustainability issues - such as modeling future climate to adjust and prepare for agricultural vulnerabilities, or assessing vulnerability to winter storms across a city - understand that tackling some of the most pressing sustainability issues in our world today requires more diversity of knowledge and methodology than a single discipline can provide.3 Disciplines, by definition, are separate branches of knowledge and thus divide themselves from other disciplines by establishing fixed boundaries within which they must operate.4 However, there have been instances in history where important contributions to science have been made by straying outside these boundaries. In the mid-1800s, Gregor Mendel was able to demonstrate the idea of hereditary inheritance which did not fit into the rules set by the biological discipline at the time. Because of this, he was ignored until his discoveries were rediscovered in the early 1900s.4,5 This is not to say that these boundaries are limitations or prevent scientific advancement. They are rather a mechanism of honing research focus to

1 Desa, U. N. (2016). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. 2 Brown, R. R., Deletic, A., & Womg, T. H. F. (2015). Interdisciplinarity: How to catalyse collaboration. Nature, 525(7569), 315-

317. https://doi.org/10.1038/525315a 3 Irwin, E. G., Culligan, P. J., Fischer-Kowalski, M., Law, K. L., Murtugudde, R., & Pfirman, S. (2018). Bridging barriers to advance

global sustainability. Nature Sustainability 1(7), 324-326. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0085-1 4 Foucault, M. (1994). The order of things : an archaeology of the human sciences. New York: Vintage Books. 5 Biography.com Editors. (2014, Apr 1). Gregor Mendel Biography. Retrieved from

https://www.biography.com/scientist/gregor-mendel

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bring about strides of improvement in each respective field. There is a place for this expertise in tackling real-world issues and advancing sustainability, but in these instances, it is often more valuable when combined with the expertise of others to approach problems whose effects span multiple natural systems and scientific circles.6 It follows that bringing together disciplines to focus on a single problem blurs the boundaries between them and makes the project, essentially, interdisciplinary. But what exactly does “interdisciplinary research” mean? This has been a difficult question for organizations to answer as interdisciplinary research takes many forms and covers a diverse range of activities. The National Academy produced a report that provided a definition that has been adopted by other research organizations such as the National Science Foundation (NSF):

“Interdisciplinary research (IDR) is a mode of research by teams or individuals that integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental understanding or to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline or field of research practice.”7

Interdisciplinarity is not the only style of research that combines disciplines. Transdisciplinarity is another research approach that is becoming more commonplace. Where interdisciplinary research, as outlined in the above definition, is simply the convergence of multiple disciplines on a problem that requires all of their expertise, transdisciplinary research focuses on problems that cannot be addressed solely through the scientific process and disciplinary knowledge individually or combined. Thus, transdisciplinary projects often involve social groups that operate outside of traditional research disciplines, such as private corporations, hospitals, and charities.8 Universities have a long-standing reward system that feeds the accomplishments of the individual within a specific discipline or academic unit.6 Most academic support has traditionally been structured to encourage researchers to make advances within their specific field and those who do are rewarded with funding and career advancement.9 Many interdisciplinary projects, especially those that have a focus on tackling societal issues, don’t end up contributing much in the form of advancement towards the fields of each discipline involved. However, with the founding of organizations like Columbia University’s Earth Institute (EI) - who exist outside the confines of a single department at Columbia, enveloping many instead – there has been a shift in research projects towards interdisciplinary work. A large driver of this shift is the desire to tackle complex problems that are becoming more pressing in our world today such as climate change and food security, whose solution require many disciplines. Real-world issues of this sort are almost exclusively interdisciplinary, since most of the world does not exist within silos of specialization.

Organizations like EI, whose mission is to “[blend] research in the physical and social sciences, education, and practical solutions to help guide the world onto a path toward sustainability,”10 are important in

6 Irwin, E. G., Culligan, P. J., Fischer-Kowalski, M., Law, K. L., Murtugudde, R., & Pfirman, S. (2018). Bridging barriers to advance

global sustainability. Nature Sustainability 1(7), 324-326. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0085-1 7 Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research, Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (2004). Facilitating

interdisciplinary research. National Academies. Washington: National Academy Press, p. 2. 8 Osborne, P. (2015). Problematizing Disciplinarity, Transdisciplinary Problematics. Theory, Culture & Society, 32(5-6), 3-35.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276415592245 9 van Rijnsoever, F. J., Hessels, L.K. (2011). Factors associated with disciplinary and interdisciplinary research collaboration.

Elsevier, 40(3), 463-472. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2010.11.001 10 The Earth Institute, Columbia University. Mission. Retrieved from https://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/1791

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fostering interdisciplinary research. EI acts as a network at Columbia University, bringing together researchers from different disciplines and providing tangible support such as seed funding, proposal support and mechanisms for in-person networking. However, the process of building interdisciplinary projects is still challenging for a number of reasons, including finding the right people or disciplines necessary to get a well-rounded view of a problem, securing funding, and publishing results. The purpose of this report is to showcase successfully executed interdisciplinary projects at the Earth Institute, in order to identify the best practices, challenges and lessons learned, and provide insight to other researchers hoping to undertake similar projects. Interviews were conducted with 15 researchers affiliated with EI, each of which focused on a successful interdisciplinary project they have or are currently working on. The complete set of interview questions can be found in Appendix A. The interviews were able to capture the variety of ways that ideas for interdisciplinary projects are sparked, how other disciplines are brought on board, how funding was secured, as well as what went well, what didn’t go well, and how challenges were overcome. This report first synthesizes the best practices and challenges that were identified across all interviews. Individual summaries of each project can be found starting on page five, to provide more detail on project content and the experience of each research team.

Best Practices Across all of the interviews, a number of best practices emerged:

• When working with different groups there will be a period of adjustment in terms of reconciling the language and data types between disciplines – account for the time it takes to do this in project planning.

• Many ideas for interdisciplinary projects are stemmed from conversations with other researchers. Talk to people about the ideas you have and ask others about their ideas. Find opportunities to talk to people outside your discipline.

• Communication is very important – make sure everyone is very aware of what is expected of them as well as explicitly what others will deliver.

• Have regular, in-person meetings as often as possible.

• If possible, allow for some room for follow up of new issues or discoveries that arise during the project, or policy/behavioral changes that could be developed after.

Among the interviewees, most project ideas stemmed from conversations that occurred between members of different disciplines. The Earth Institute has hosted a myriad of events that bring together researchers from across many different disciplines. It is from events like these that ideas for interdisciplinary projects originated for many of the researchers interviewed. Networking, events, workshops, and seminars are important avenues for serendipitous conversation that can lead to interdisciplinary collaboration.

Maintaining effective communication was explicitly mentioned by eight interviewees as an important factor constituting a successful interdisciplinary project. At every stage of development, maintaining regular and effective communication is paramount. Follow up is necessary to advance a project from an idea brought up in conversation to a structured proposal. Many of those interviewed noted that even

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when a project advances past this point, in the stages of determining the scope of the project and the specific role of each group, there are many opportunities for miscommunication to occur. Approaches to research vary widely across disciplines, and many researchers are not familiar with the styles and practices of disciplines other than their own. Because of this, a common experience is that assumptions can be made about the processes and capabilities of other researchers. This can lead to problems down the line when one group does not have a deliverable that another expected, or expected timelines for the completion of certain tasks are different. Taking the time from the outset to be very clear about the actual abilities of each team within the scope of the project will serve two purposes. One, it will make sure all groups are on the same page about the actual, realistic results of the project. Some projects do not progress past this point if each discipline involved realizes their project goals don’t align. Two, it reduces the possibility of one discipline expecting data that another is unable to collect, which can lead to gaps and weaknesses in the project.

Finally, there is always a period of adjustment that exists when multiple disciplines are working on collecting data surrounding a single topic. The way each discipline looks at data and the units of analysis they work in are akin to their own unique “language.” Eleven interviewees emphasized that reconciling and understanding these differences between groups so that the data is compatible requires time and effort at the beginning of any interdisciplinary project. This is especially true for projects that involve disciplines or individuals that have not collaborated before. It is important that when crafting a proposal and creating a project timeline that the time needed for calibration is accounted for.

For all of the aforementioned reasons, five of the researchers interviewed emphasized that understanding the processes of different disciplines’ work is helped by working in close proximity. Navigating the challenges regarding communication have been found to be more easily surmounted when all groups involved in the project are located close enough together that regular meetings in person or over technology are possible. These can serve a variety of purposes, the most obvious of which are providing time dedicated to discussing the project as a group, allowing for reporting findings, streamlining the process, and addressing any questions or confusion. Continuing regular meetings, even in the absence of any major project updates, is important for maintaining momentum throughout the span of the project.

Challenges Faced Across all of the interviews, two common challenges stood out:

• Many funding opportunities are designed for disciplinary work. It can be difficult to locate opportunities for funding for interdisciplinary work.

• Similar to funding, most journals are focused on a single discipline, and thus finding a journal to publish the results of an interdisciplinary project is difficult.

The main challenges that were each mentioned in five of the interviews occur at the initiation and end of the project. Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary projects are perceived to have more difficulty getting funded than traditional disciplinary projects. Studies have shown that the higher the degree of interdisciplinarity in a project proposal, the lower the likelihood of it being funded. A major factor contributing to this is the aspect of the peer review of research proposals.11 This can often be because the

11 Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Building Bridges in the Brain, Behavioral, and Clinical Sciences; Pellmar TC, Eisenberg

L, editors. Bridging Disciplines in the Brain, Behavioral, and Clinical Sciences. Washington (DC): National Academies

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members of the review board are not knowledgeable in all the disciplines covered in the proposal, and aspects of the proposal that are normal practice within its home discipline may seem illogical or confusing to the foreign review board.12 Even in instances where all disciplines involved in the project are present on the review board, there can be a lack of appreciation or understanding for the interdisciplinary issue being presented.13 This often counts against the proposal and prevents the team from receiving funding.12 A similar problem can arise at the end of a project for those who wish to publish their results. Many peer-reviewed journals are strictly focused on publishing results from a single discipline.13 An obstacle that five interviewees encountered is facing rejection from journals whose content aligns with only one discipline represented in the project. In the case of new researchers, for which prolific publishing is most beneficial, this could disincentivize participation in interdisciplinary work.14 The low number of interdisciplinary research publications in peer-reviewed journals, a metric which is often used as a method to evaluate the importance of a type of research, can have negative impacts on other interdisciplinary projects being reviewed for grant funding.12 This can result in a cycle that devalues interdisciplinarity, which can be hard to overcome.

Individual Projects This section contains individual summaries of each project. The table below provides a snapshot picture of all projects/interviews, summarizing the disciplines involved in the project and key factors for success as identified by the interviewees. Details of each project follow.

Title and Interviewee Disciplines Involved Key Factors for Success

Health Effects and Geochemistry of Arsenic

Alexander van Geen

Health Science, Earth Science,

Economics

Reliable scheduled meetings;

seed funding

POPGRID Data Collaborative

Robert Chen

Demography, Geography,

Health, Public Health,

Structural Engineering, Data

Science

Multi-dimensional view of the

problem; interest from outside

stakeholders

Vulnerability of the U.S. Atlantic Coast to

Hazards Associated with Extreme Weather

Storms

Susana Adamo

Oceanography, Climatology,

Economics, Social demography

Specificity of project focus;

reliable scheduled meetings

Press (US); 2000. 3, Barriers to Interdisciplinary Research and Training. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44876/

12 Bromham, L., Dinnage, R. & Hua, X. Interdisciplinary research has consistently lower funding success. Nature 534, 684–687 (2016) doi:10.1038/nature18315

13 Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Building Bridges in the Brain, Behavioral, and Clinical Sciences; Pellmar TC, Eisenberg L, editors. Bridging Disciplines in the Brain, Behavioral, and Clinical Sciences. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2000. 3, Barriers to Interdisciplinary Research and Training. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44876/

14 Garcez, P. (2014, Sep 19). Early Career Researchers and the pressure to Publish. Retrieved from https://www.wiley.com/network/researchers/preparing-your-article/early-career-researchers-and-the-pressure-to-publish

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Adapting Agriculture to Climate Today for

Tomorrow (ACToday)

Lisa Goddard

Agriculture, Climatology,

Meteorology, Public Health,

Policy, International Affairs,

Environmental Biology,

Anthropology, Economics

Transparency in project goals

with all parties involved; team

members working from the

same location

The Opportunities for and Hurdles to

Combined Heat and Power in New York

City

Michael Gerrard

Mechanical Engineering,

Environmental Law

Defined individual roles;

expected deliverables

completed by all

SRN: Integrated Urban Infrastructure

Solutions for Environmentally Sustainable,

Healthy and Livable Cities

Patricia Culligan

Civil Engineering, Mechanical

Engineering, Anthropology,

Architecture, Environmental

Engineering

Team members working from

the same location; pre-existing

connections with collaborators

Public health impacts of the severe haze in

Equatorial Asia in September-October 2015

Ruth DeFries

Ecology, Atmospheric

Modelling, Epidemiology,

Health

Defined individual roles;

expected deliverables

completed by all

World Modelers Project

Michael Puma

Climate Science, Economics

Multi-dimensional view of the

problem

Resilient Children Resilient Communities

Initiative

Jeffrey Schlegelmilch

Education, Social Work,

Emergency Management,

Earth Sciences, Public Health

Flexibility to changethe

trajectory of the project;

involvement of local

stakeholders

Absolute humidity modulates influenza

survival, transmission, and seasonality

Jeffrey Shaman

Epidemiology, Mathematics,

Climate Science, Meteorology,

Virology

Willingness to learn from all

involved collaborators

Decision and Information System for the

Coastal Waters of Oman (DISCO)

Integrative Tool for Managing Coastal

Resources under Changing Climate

Joaquim Goes

Earth Science, Computer

Science

Trust with the community

Vulnerability to coastal storms in New York

City neighborhoods

Malgosia Madajewicz

Economics, Oceanography,

Anthropology

Willingness to learn from all

involved collaborators; defined

individual roles; expected

deliverables completed by all

Clean Air Toolbox for Cities

Faye McNeill

Engineering, Earth Science,

Public Health, Law, Ecology,

Evolutionary Biology, Data

Science

Willingness to learn from all

involved collaborators

Groundswell: Preparing for Internal

Climate Migration

Alexander de Sherbinin

Demography, Geography,

Climate Science, Statistics

Specified project focus;

willingness to learn from all

involved collaborators

Evaluating Proxy Influence and Reconstruction Skill in Data Assimilation

Statistics, Climate Science

Post-doctoral student involvement; defined

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Based Climate Field Reconstructions Using Extremal Depth Jason Smerdon

individual roles; expected deliverables completed by all

Title: Health Effects and Geochemistry of Arsenic Lead PI: Joseph Graziano initially, now Ana Navas-Acien Interviewee: Alexander van Geen (Co-Director) Length of Project: 20+ years Geographic Location: Bangladesh Disciplines Involved: Health Science, Earth Science, Economics Dr. Alexander van Geen from the Geochemistry division at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) leads the earth-science and mitigation linked to the Superfund-supported project Health Effects of Arsenic Longitudinal Study (HEALS) in Bangladesh, which started in 2000 and is still ongoing. Researchers are examining the health effects of short and long-term exposure to inorganic arsenic that is caused by drinking contaminated groundwater. They assembled of a cohort of nearly 12,000 adults in Bangladesh from a 25 square kilometer area, and sampled the 6,000 drinking water wells, labelling each well’s drinking water as “safe” or “unsafe.” 75% of the wells were found to be unsafe at the World Health Organization (WHO) standard for Arsenic in drinking water of 10 parts per billion (ppb) and 53% were found to unsafe at the Bangladesh standard of 50 ppb.15 The main health effects of arsenic exposure they are focusing on are cardio-vascular disease and children’s cognitive development. From the outset of this project Dr. van Geen and his team have worked to implement mitigation strategies to reduce exposure among the population they are studying.16 The idea for this project was born as a result of the timing of a specific sequence of events. Around the year 2000, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was considering regulation changes around acceptable levels of arsenic in groundwater to lower the standard safe level of arsenic in drinking water from 50 ppb to 10 ppb. There was considerable pushback because of the effort that would have to go into finding new water sources or additional treatment for many cities, and there was low consensus among scientists as to the actual health effects of arsenic. In 1998, Dr. van Geen and his colleagues were approached by a visiting geologist from West Bengal, India who had spoken to them about the extent of the problem with arsenic poisoning they were experiencing there. Shortly after this, the New York Times published an article on the same topic but focusing on Bangladesh, a country that neighbors West Bengal. This sparked conversation between Columbia University’s Mailman School for Public Health (MSPH), where Dr. Joseph Graziano had been approached independently about the arsenic issue by Bangladesh-born epidemiologist Dr. Habibul Ahsan, and the Earth Institute’s LDEO. Dr. van Geen and his colleagues at Lamont applied for funding from NSF twice and were denied both times. Dr. Graziano had recently chaired the review of a previous round of Superfund proposals and the joint Mailman-Lamont application was funded for 5 years on the first try in 2000, and this has been supported continuously by the NIEHS and other agencies since.

15 van Geen, A., H. Ahsan, A. H. Horneman, R. K. Dhar, Y. Zheng, I. Hussain, K. M. Ahmed, A. Gelman, M. Stute, H. J. Simpson, S.

Wallace, C. Small, F. Parvez, V. Slavkovich, N. J. LoIacono, M. Becker, Z. Cheng, H. Momotaj, M. Shahnewaz, A. A. Seddique, and J. H. Graziano, Promotion of well-switching to mitigate the current arsenic crisis in Bangladesh, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 81, 732-737, 2002.

16 Ahsan, H., Chen, Y., Parvez, F., Argos, M., Hussain, A. I., Momotaj, H., … Graziano, J. (2006). Health Effects of Arsenic Longitudinal Study (HEALS): Description of a multidisciplinary epidemiologic investigation. Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, 16(2), 191–205. https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.jea.7500449

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Collecting 6000 water samples and initial health data from 12,000 people was a new experience for Dr. van Geen, and this activity alone pointed the way to a form of mitigation that was more plausible than water treatment. This approach relies instead of behavioral changes in the community, specifically the sharing of the subset of safe wells beyond the original owner of the well. Realizing that the team was incomplete scientifically to study such changes in behavior, Dr. van Geen contacted environmental economist Alexander Pfaff, then working at Columbia, who in turn enrolled another economist and his colleague, Malgosia Madajewicz. Following a meeting with the director of Earth Institute (EI) at the time, Michael Crow, the EI provided the economists with the additional funding they needed to study household responses following the well testing campaign that had recently been completed. These findings emphasizing the importance of well testing was used to identify the most effective way to reduce exposure in this particular community and beyond.17 Title: POPGRID Data Collaborative Lead PI: Robert Chen Length of Project: 2 years (ongoing) Geographic Location: Global Disciplines Involved: Demography, Geography, Health, Public Health, Structural Engineering, and Data Science Dr. Robert Chen, the director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), leads the POPGRID Data Collaborative. This project is working to coordinate efforts by groups around the world to produce better spatial data to represent the distribution and characteristics of people and infrastructure across the world. The goal is to facilitate the appropriate use of spatial population, settlement, and infrastructure data in support of a range of sustainable development applications, including disaster management, assessment of climate change impacts, resource planning, and poverty alleviation. This project evolved from a number of separate efforts by groups from around the world over the past two decades that utilized different approaches to global mapping, such as using different sources of remote sensing data, of human settlements, population, and infrastructure. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages for different applications, but often the data are repurposed for different applications without careful attention to the underlying assumptions, limitations, and potential for inconsistencies. With the development of new, high resolution sources of remote sensing data in combination with rapidly expanding computing capabilities, especially in the private sector, the opportunities for innovation in both methods and applications are growing rapidly. At the same time, the proliferation of new data, methods, and sources may be causing confusion among potential users about which data are the most appropriate for their needs, and what level of confidence to place in specific population estimates for specific areas of the world. Dr. Chen received seed funding from the Earth Institute’s Cross-Cutting Initiative in 2016, which allowed all the groups from multiple countries and scientific communities to meet and develop new interdisciplinary data collaborations. The meeting included interested sponsors and users such as

17 Madajewicz, M., A. Pfaff, A. van Geen, J. Graziano, I. Hussein, H. Momotaj, R. Sylvi, and H. Ahsan, Can information alone both

improve awareness and change behavior? Response to arsenic contamination of groundwater in Bangladesh, Journal of Development Economics 84, 731–754, 2007.

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including the Gates Foundation to gauge their interest in the project concept. The Gates Foundation then awarded an initial grant to CIESIN to further explore development of the data collaborative and subsequently provided additional funding for a second phase of the project. Phase 2 brought in two partner organizations, the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, to support interactions with the international development community. CIESIN, together with several other members of the group, also successfully competed for a 3-year grant from NASA to explore the use of human settlement and population data based on remote sensing to support monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The POPGRID Data Collaborative continues to expand, with active participation from research groups and centers around the world, and both public and private sector participants, including Facebook, Esri, Google, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. POPGRID is also coordinating its work with the Human Planet Initiative of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), a voluntary intergovernmental partnership of more than 100 national governments and 100 Participating Organizations working to improve the availability, access, and use of Earth observations for a sustainable planet. The POPGRID web site provides access to a range of information about the different data sets currently available, and a tool for visualizing and intercomparing the data, developed by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN. POPGRID has also supported development of peer-reviewed literature, online discussions, and informational webinars, which are accessible through the web site. Title: Vulnerability of the U.S. Atlantic Coast to Hazards Associated with Extreme Weather Storms Lead PI: Yochanan Kushnir Interviewee: Susana Adamo Length of Project: 4 years Geographic Location: United States, Atlantic Coast Disciplines Involved: Oceanography, Climatology, Economics, Social demography Dr. Susana Adamo, a demographer and research scientist at the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at the Earth Institute (EI), Columbia University, was a co-lead on the project Vulnerability of the U.S. Atlantic Coast to Hazards Associated with Extreme Weather Storms. The lead PI was Dr. Yochanan Kushnir, Director of the Cooperative Institute for Climate Applications and Research. The goal behind this project was to look at the various effects of winter storms in the Northeast United States, such as the biological, ecological, climate, erosion, and social aspects. Dr. Adamo and her team provided the data and tools to quantify risk in order to plan better for adaptation and preparedness in the Northeast U.S. coast during seasons of extreme cold. They were able to compile research on the movement, pattern, and impacts of winter hazards, formulate a stochastic model for overall extratropical cyclone hazard over North America, perform an analysis on the social vulnerabilities exacerbated in these storm scenarios, and determine the economic impact in terms of property loss as a result of extratropical cyclones in the study area [cite the database]. This project evolved from a conversation that happened at a meeting of several Earth Institute researchers, including Dr. Kushnir. In 2014, Dr. Adamo attended a Climate Adaptation Working Group meeting hosted by the Earth Institute. In one meeting, participants discussed the NASA interdisciplinary research grant was discussed and Dr. Kushnir suggested a research project around adaptation and resilience against winter storms that came from the sea. Dr. Kushnir and Dr. Adamo decided to pursue

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this further, and as they formed the proposal they brought on researchers from oceanography, climatology, economics, and demographics. Everyone involved throughout the course of the project was brought on at the outset. Title: Adapting Agriculture to Climate Today for Tomorrow (ACToday) Lead PI: Lisa Goddard Length of Project: 5 years (2 years passed – ongoing) Geographic Location: Guatemala, Senegal, Bangladesh, Colombia, Ethiopia, Vietnam Disciplines Involved: Agriculture, Climatology, Meteorology, Public Health, Policy, International Affairs, Environmental Biology, Anthropology, Economics Dr. Lisa Goddard, the director of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), leads the project Adapting Agriculture to Climate Today for Tomorrow (ACToday). This project was the first of the Columbia World Projects (CWP), an initiative at Columbia University whose goal is to take on global challenges in ways that improve people’s lives.18 The main goal of ACToday is reducing hunger, in support of the UN’s second Sustainable Development Goal: Zero Hunger. With this goal in mind, this project incorporates issues of food security, sustainable agriculture, and food nutrition in its work. In many developing countries, agriculture is vulnerable to the climate and climate change because its mostly rain fed, meaning access to irrigation and insurance is not as accessible as it is in developed countries. Most agricultural sectors in these locations have little to no information surrounding climate predictions for the upcoming year, so in order to lower risk, decision-makers always plant and plan for the worst-case scenario: drought. This has radiating negative effects on farmers livelihoods and food availability throughout the country. ACToday wants to incorporate climate predictions into the agricultural sphere in these countries so smallholder farmers and other decision-makers can more adequately plan for applying for aid for a disastrous year or take as much advantage of a good year as possible. The idea for this project was born out of a series of conversations that Dr. Goddard had with Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, and a committee that he had put together for CWP. The ACToday project built upon research and relationships that IRI had already engaged in. CWP agreed to fund the project for Dr. Goddard and her team to carry out work in six countries around the world. IRI’s research engages practitioners and problems in the real world, and every real-world problem is interdisciplinary. So most disciplines involved in ACToday were sourced from within IRI or Columbia from already established, heavily utilized connections and partnerships. Groups involved outside of IRI include the Mailman School of Public Health (MSPH), the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA GISS), and the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology (E3B). All of these groups were involved from the outset. And for most of the expertise needed throughout the project, there has been someone available within Columbia to provide it. In the rare instance that this was not the case, Dr. Goddard and her team have brought on experts from other universities on a temporary basis to complete in depth reports on the missing information. For example, after the onset of the project, nutrition was one area that the ACToday team felt they were lacking. They reached out to an expert on nutrition at Rutgers University who had completed her PhD at Columbia, and commissioned her to compile reports on the nutrition details they were missing for each country.

18 Columbia World Projects. Columbia World Projects. Retrieved from https://worldprojects.columbia.edu/

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Title: The Opportunities for and Hurdles to Combined Heat and Power in New York City Lead PI: Michael Gerrard Length of Project: 1 year Geographic Location: New York City, New York Disciplines Involved: Mechanical Engineering, Environmental Law Michael Gerrard, Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Law School and director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, led the project “The Opportunities for and Hurdles to Combined Heat and Power in New York City” alongside Dr. Vijay Modi, a professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University. This project focused on the possibility and benefits of the development of combined heat and power (CHP) in New York City. A CHP system produces electricity and thermal energy from a single fuel source, which operates at a percent efficiency twice as high as fossil fuel power plants. This allows CHP systems to reduce overall fuel consumption and thereby decrease air pollution.19 Dr Modi was doing research on CHP and wanted to work to increase adoption of CHP systems in New York City. However, while he could identify the physical work that would need to be done to make these improvements, he had little knowledge about the legal aspects. It was then he approached Professor Gerrard and the Sabin Center to join his project and provide guidance on the legal actions that would be needed to make Dr. Modi’s proposed changes. Together they received seed funding from the Earth Institute’s Cross Cutting Initiative, which provided enough support for them to complete their project and publish a report summarizing the following: one, the potential for CHP development in New York city; two, what hurdles could arise in the development process; and three, proposed policy solutions.20 Title: SRN: Integrated Urban Infrastructure Solutions for Environmentally Sustainable, Healthy and Livable Cities Lead PI: Anu Ramaswami Interviewee: Patricia Culligan (Co-Director) Length of Project: 4 years Geographic Location: United States, India Disciplines Involved: Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Anthropology, Architecture, Environmental Engineering Dr. Patricia Culligan, chair of the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University (CU), is the co-director of the Sustainable Healthy Cities project: Integrated Urban Infrastructure Solutions for Environmentally Sustainable, Healthy, and Livable Cities. This project is led by Dr. Anu Ramaswami of the University of Minnesota (UMN) and is a network that connects nine research universities, cities across the U.S. and India, as well as government and industry partners. The opportunity to take on this project was presented by the National Science Foundation, which has begun to pool funding into larger opportunities for teams of investigators from different disciplines to tackle more

19 Alexis Saba, Bianca Howard, Michael Gerrard & Vijay Modi, The Opportunities for and Hurdles to Combined Heat and Power in

New York City, Columbia Law School, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, May 2013 (2013). Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/1904

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complex world problems. The official recipient of this grant was UMN, who then brought together the other universities and organizations involved. The goal of this research focuses on determining the best way to achieve urban sustainability, health, and livability goals through a balance of local and large infrastructure systems.20 This is further broken down into the many aspects of city infrastructure: energy infrastructure, water infrastructure, green infrastructure, and decision making. In determining the disciplines necessary, researchers were brought on who could most effectively address each of these infrastructure areas. Within CU, those involved were Dr. Culligan, a professor in civil engineering, Dr. Vijay Modi, professor in mechanical engineering; Dr. Ben Orlove, an anthropologist in the School of International and Public Affairs; Dr. Richard Plunz, a professor in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; and Dr. Upmanu Lall, the Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering. It was through Dr. Culligan’s connections that the other Columbia researchers were brought on to this project, aided by the fact that they had already worked together on multiple occasions, through the Earth Institute. Title: Public health impacts of the severe haze in Equatorial Asia in September-October 2015: demonstration of a new framework for informing fire management strategies to reduce downwind smoke exposure. Lead PI: Samuel Myers, Harvard University Interviewee: Ruth DeFries Length of Project: 5 years Geographic Location: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore Disciplines Involved: Ecology, Atmospheric Modelling, Epidemiology, Health Dr. Ruth DeFries, a Professor of Sustainable Development in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology and chair of the Earth Institute faculty, worked on a project lead by researchers at Harvard University assessing the impact of smoke emissions from land use related fires on public health in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Dr. DeFries and her team addressed the following problems in their research: where are the fires coming from and why, which areas of fire reduction can best improve public health, and what is the best means to communicate information to the affected communities and local decision-makers. Dr. DeFries’ role was to examine how the land was being used in the fire prone areas and what exactly the fires were emitting into the air. This idea for this project was sparked when Dr. DeFries went to a meeting organized by the Wildlife Conservation Society about the interaction of natural systems and human health. There she got to talking with a colleague from the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard University, Dr. Samuel Myers, who brought up the issue of land use related fires in Indonesia. At the time, Dr. DeFries had spent some time on the topic herself because she had a doctoral student, Dr. Miriam Marlier, working on these fires and their related health impacts. Dr. Marlier had already done a significant amount of work in forecasting the influence of different conservation and development policies surrounding fire emissions in Indonesia. Dr. DeFries and Dr. Myers decided it would be a good opportunity to build upon her work and form a collaborative project. They were able to secure funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.

20 Sustainable Healthy Cities. About: Project Overview. Retrieved from http://www.sustainablehealthycities.org/about/

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The nature of the project required the involvement of different types of disciplinary expertise. After Dr. DeFries gathered data on land use and fire locations, atmospheric modelers were needed to take this information and made a model of how emissions are transported through the atmosphere. From there, epidemiologists and health workers could take this data and formulate a health impact assessment for the communities being exposed. The final product was an app based on the resulting models of these data that could estimate the lives saved if the fires were stopped in different areas. This could potentially help policy makers in the areas reduce the negative health impacts along with decrease the environmental effects that result from the release of carbon from burning trees.21 Title: World Modelers Project Lead PI: Michael Puma Length of Project: < 1 year (ongoing) Geographic Location: South Sudan, Ethiopia, other sites TBD Disciplines Involved: Climate Science, Economics, Food Security, International Trade, Migration Dr. Michael Puma, the Director of the Center for Climate Systems Research, spoke about the project he’s leading called the World Modelers Project funded by the United States Department of Defense: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The goal of this project is to combine qualitative causal analysis, quantitative models, and data to be able to provide better understanding of national security questions. The first subject that is being explored is food insecurity and its contributing factors such as climate, water availability, soil quality, financial market fluctuations, and physical security.22 Within this project, Dr. Puma and his group specifically look at food security in South Sudan and Ethiopia. Their group is working on a tool that could be used in situations when food security is threatened to help determine which interventions make sense, when interventions are needed, and what active interventions should be considered. Their goal is to make this model applicable to food systems and security around the world. This Columbia team is also building models for human mobility. Presently, refugee flows are being modeled with a simple gravity model. Next, this model will be improved and used for internal displacement of people within countries. Dr. Puma’s team joined the World Modelers project after it was started. He knew another project lead already involved with World Modelers and was told that the project was lacking expertise in economics, transportation, and crop models. They were looking to strengthen this section, so Dr. Puma reached out to organizations that he knew had expertise in these areas: the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany works on crop production forecasts and crop modeling, and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia does work in transport, household livelihood, and nomadic movement models. Together they submitted the proposal to DARPA and a year later were brought on to the project. A table of models in this project is available here. Title: Resilient Children Resilient Communities Initiative Interviewee: Jeff Schlegelmilch

21 Koplitz, S. N., Mickley, L. J., Marlier, M. E., Buonocore, J. J., Kim, P. S., Liu, T., … Myers, S. S. (2016). Public health impacts of

the severe haze in equatorial Asia in September-October 2015: demonstration of a new framework for informing fire management strategies to reduce downwind smoke exposure. Environmental Research Letters, 11(9), 94023. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/11/9/094023

22 Elliott, J. World Modelers. Retrieved from https://www.darpa.mil/program/world-modelers

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Length of Project: 4 years (ongoing) Geographic Location: New York, Arkansas, North Carolina, Puerto Rico Disciplines Involved: Education, Social Work, Emergency Management, Earth Sciences, Public Health Jeff Schlegelmilch, the Deputy Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP), is part of a project called Resilient Children Resilient Communities Initiative (RCRC). The objective of this project is to increase the resilience of child-serving institutions in communities affected by disaster to better help the children of communities recover and return to normalcy faster after a crisis.23 This project consists two phases. In the first phase, from 2015-2018, NCDP and their partner organization for Phase I, Save the Children, focused on building resilience prior to a disaster in two communities in New York and Arkansas. Research and efforts in these states there resulted in the RCRC Toolbox that is a collection of resources, procedures, training, and guidance for the use of everyone from individual families to policymakers to help make their communities and children more resilient to potential disasters24. In the second phase, which started in 2019, NCDP is testing and extending the application of their Toolbox to communities that are in the recovery stages following a disaster, specifically in Puerto Rico and North Carolina. The idea for this project came out of previous research that the NCDP had completed in the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina and the gulf oil spill. This project is based on the premise that children are involved in so many different aspects of a community that their recovery can be used as a bellwether of the disaster recovery of the community as a whole. NCDP researchers looked at the results of longitudinal surveys completed by families in the Gulf Coast and New Jersey as well as some other children and family health studies. As a result, they defined the RCRC project as having three main areas of focus: Research (compiling new data nationally, applying a resilience index to the sectors they’ve identified as interacting with children), Practice (establishing and supporting local Community Resilience Coalitions), and Policy (elevating the work done in and by these communities to the national policy level). Both phases of the RCRC project have been funded by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a global healthcare company. The NCDP director and GSK had an existing relationship at the time RCRC started, and GSK was interested in how this project could strengthen their own community partnerships. NCDP worked with their connections within GSK to craft the proposal, ensuring that the goals of both groups were met. Working with the potential funders on crafting the proposal helped to make sure that the proposal aligned with the criteria of the voting committee, which streamlined the process and made it beneficial for both parties. There are numerous stakeholders involved in this project. There is an advisory board made up of professionals including a FEMA official, a professional with knowledge of disability needs, the sociomedical researcher whose longitudinal surveys were used to define the goals of RCRC, and the PI of the research that led to the idea for this project. The disciplines represented by these advisory board members, which include health, disaster management, and sociomedical science, were involved from the outset of the project. RCRC also included participation of community nonprofits, educators, social workers, and first responders who are members of each individual community involved in the study. These community stakeholders were brought on after the proposal was submitted, after NCDP researchers were

23 National Center for Disaster Preparedness. RCRC Home. Retrieved from https://ncdp.columbia.edu/microsite-page/resilient-

children-resilient-communities/rcrc-home/ 24 RCRC Toolbox. About the Toolbox. Retrieved from https://rcrctoolbox.org/

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able to enter the communities and assess which groups and individuals best represented the disaster recovery efforts in each individual location. Title: Absolute humidity modulates influenza survival, transmission, and seasonality Lead PI: Jeffrey Shaman Length of Project: 5 years Geographic Location: United States Disciplines Involved: Epidemiology, Mathematics, Climate Science, Meteorology, Virology Dr. Jeffrey Shaman, Professor of Environmental Health Sciences and Director of the Climate and Health Program at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, lead the research project Absolute humidity modulates influenza survival, transmission, and seasonality. The purpose of this research was to simulate the transmission of influenza using a model that incorporated the effects of absolute humidity. Dr. Shaman established previously that absolute humidity modulates the survival and viability of the influenza virus once it is expelled by a host into the ambient environment. Building off this, he and his team then developed a model that could reproduce the seasonal cycle of influenza as it is observed in the world using absolute humidity as a driver. This idea for this research project was born when Dr. Shaman attended a workshop at Harvard when he was a postdoc that was about the seasonality of flu and why it occurs in the winter in temperate regions. Some years later he came across a paper published by virologists from the Mount Sinai School of medicine examining influenza transmission in guinea pigs and finding that relative humidity and temperature modulated transmission. He wondered what the results would be if a mass-based measure of humidity were used, as relative humidity itself varies with temperature. As a result, Dr. Shaman took the Mt. Sinai data and recalculated the relationship between influenza transmission and absolute humidity and found it had a much stronger relationship. He wanted to then take what he found in the lab setting and apply it to the real world, so he brought his results to a colleague with experience in disease modeling: Dr. Marc Lipsitch from the Departments of Epidemiology, and Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard University. Dr. Lipsitch was very interested in pursuing this idea, so he brought Dr. Shaman on to his NIH proposal for the MIDAS Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics as a subawardee, which they then won. Other researchers involved in this project were Dr. Lipsitch’s postdoc, an epidemiologist from the NIH Fogarty center, and a disease ecologist from Princeton. They were brought onto the project by Dr. Lipsitch who believed their perspectives would benefit the study. Title: Decision and Information System for the Coastal Waters of Oman (DISCO) Integrative Tool for Managing Coastal Resources under Changing Climate Lead PI: Joaquim Goes Length of Project: 4 years (ongoing) Geographic Location: Oman Disciplines Involved: Earth Sciences, Computer Science Dr. Joaquim Goes, a Research Professor in the Biology and Paleo Environment Division at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, leads the project Decision and Information for the Coastal Waters of Oman Integrative Tool of Managing Coastal Resources under Changing Climate. This ongoing project is focused

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on the Arabian Sea and specifically on the coastal waters of the Sultanate of Oman, where coastal upwelling and eddy activity are causing upward flow of deeper cold, hypoxic waters on to Oman’s continental shelf and outbreaks of unprecedented blooms of green mixotrophic algae Noctiluca scintillans (Sea Sparkle).25 The lack of oxygen in the water also suffocates thousands of fish, causing the fisheries in the area to suffer. The goal of this multi-disciplinary project is to research climate-mediated changes in circulation and phytoplankton productivity of this region that are causing these mass pockets of hypoxia that are promoting outbreaks of Noctiluca. Dr. Goes and his team are building on this understanding of this system to build a real time hypoxia and Noctiluca bloom forecasting system that can be used as a decision support tool by organizations in Oman, from government officials to the fisheries who manage Oman’s coastal resources. Their plan is to make this presently computer-based forecasting tool a system that cab ne used on smartphones and tablets. The idea for this project evolved from long term research Dr. Goes had been doing in Oman. Through his research, oceanic events he had predicted years earlier had come to pass, so his partners in Oman suggested that they create a prediction tool that stakeholders could have access to, to help them prepare before damaging events. In order to make this possible, Dr. Goes reached out to the U.S. Naval Research Lab in the Stannis Space Center where they already had an operational oceanic circulation model for the geographic area he was looking at. In order to make this operational for Dr. Goes’ project, he coupled his biogeochemistry findings with the circulation model. To make this tool accessible to the interested stakeholders, he brought on a Biological Oceanographer and a Fishery Scientist from the University of Southern California, with experience in developing GIS based systems for fisheries management to be a part of this project. Funding for this project comes from several sources. Dr. Goes and his team received a grant from NASA that covered the costs for developing DISCO and travel and training for the members of their collaborators in Oman. In order to fund their fieldwork, they received funding from a private funder, the Sultan Qaboos University Cultural Center in Washington DC. Finally, in the third year of the project, in order to finance the creation and provision of this tool, Dr. Goes and his team will be receiving additional funding from the Ministry of Fisheries and Agricultural Wealth, Sultanate of Oman for installation of DISCO in Muscat and for training of its personnel. Additional funding from the Gordon Betty Moore Foundation allows the team to conduct research on the physiology of Noctiluca that is required for the bloom forecasting model. This project became possible on account of many years of relationship-building, as Dr. Goes spent ample time in the country working with their teams and provided evidence of the accuracy of their predictions during the first three years of his research. Title: Vulnerability to coastal storms in New York City neighborhoods Lead PI: Malgosia Madajewicz Length of Project: 2 years Geographic Location: New York City, NY Disciplines Involved: Economics, Oceanography, Anthropology

25 Goes, J. I., Gomes, H. R., deRada, S., Chai, F., Xue, H., Kiefer, D., Al-Kharusi, L., Al-Hashmi, K., Al-Azri, Adnan. Decision and

Information System for the Coastal waters of Oman (DISCO) – An integrative tool for managing coastal resources under changing climate [PDF file]. Retrieved from https://cce.nasa.gov/cce/biodiversity_2017/Day%202/Afternoon/Lightning/Goes_NASA-Ecological%20Forecasting/Goes-NASA-DISCO-2017.pdf

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Dr. Malgosia Madajewicz, an economist and researcher at the Center for Climate Systems Research (CCSR), is the lead of the project Vulnerability to coastal storms in New York City neighborhoods. This project investigated social vulnerability and resilience to coastal flooding in New York City using household surveys and interviews conducted after Hurricane Sandy. Dr. Madajewicz and her team were trying to understand, based on how the city was recovering from Hurricane Sandy, which populations are most vulnerable to coastal flooding, which are the most resilient, and why. From this, they determined what factors help lower vulnerability and improve resilience. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Dr. Madajewicz observed that New York City was focusing on improving the resilience of infrastructure but not as much was being done on improving the resilience of neighborhoods and the people living in them. Funding for this project was compiled from multiple sources. Dr. Madajewicz is a member of the Consortium for Climate Risk in the Urban Northeast (CCRUN) which is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) funded Regional Integrated Science and Assessment (RISA) project program, which funded a portion of her salary. An objective of this program is to work with decision-makers to develop science-based information to inform decision-making regarding adaptation to climate variability and change. After Hurricane Sandy happened, Dr. Madajewicz focused a previously awarded grant funded by NOAA’s Coastal and Ocean Climate Applications program to focus on this vulnerability assessment. As a result, she was able to redirect the funds to support the project as well. Dr. Madajewicz brought on her colleague Philip Orton, a research assistant professor of physical oceanography at the Stevens Institute of Technology and fellow member of CCRUN. Dr. Orton is a member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) and was developing the flood projections for the NPCC report that would inform resilience building efforts in New York City. She also brought on an anthropologist, who was her postdoc at the time, and Dr. Mark Becker, a data scientist at CIESIN. After they started data collection, Dr. Madajewicz was contacted by the organization Trust for Public Land who asked if she could complete a project that focused on social vulnerability as a part of a larger project that the Trust was working on. She proposed using the coastal storm vulnerability project to fulfil their request, and they agreed, providing additional funding that allowed Dr. Madajewicz and her team to complete their project. Title: Clean Air Toolbox for Cities Lead PI: Faye McNeill Length of Project: < 1 year (ongoing) Geographic Location: Nairobi, Kenya; Kampala, Uganda; Kinshasa, D.R. Congo; Brazzaville, R. Congo; Accra, Ghana; Kigali, Rwanda; Lome, Togo; Kolkata, India; Chennai, India Disciplines Involved: Engineering, Earth Science, Public Health, Law, Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, Data Science Dr. Faye McNeill, professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University, leads the project Clean Air Toolbox for Cities. The goal of the Clean Air Toolbox is to work on developing solutions for cleaner air in specific cities across the Global South. This project is one the first funded by the Earth Solutions program within the Earth Institute (EI), which supports projects that link research at Columbia with real world problems on the ground. Dr. McNeill and her colleagues were approached by EI and asked to convene a group of experts on air pollution from fields all across Columbia University to come up with a proposal around finding solutions for air pollution around the world.

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Dr. McNeill had interacted with many other air pollution experts across Columbia University (CU) through several meetings organized by the Columbia Global Centers (CGC) in their China and India locations. These meetings were arranged after CGC staff noticed that several groups across CU were applying for similar air pollution-related projects and wanted to provide a forum for collaboration and discussion Dr. McNeill built upon these connections when putting a team together for the Clean Air Toolbox. Their team received seed funding from EI to look at select cities around the world for the next year. Title: Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration Lead PI: Alexander de Sherbinin Length of Project: 1 year Geographic Location: Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia Disciplines Involved: Demography, Geography, Climate Science, Statistics Dr. Alex de Sherbinin, the Associate Director for Science Applications at the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) within the Earth Institute (EI), led the project Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration. This goal of this project, funded by the World Bank, was to model the spatial location and numbers of people likely to migrate owing to climate change impacts by 2050 in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia. In 2016, the World Bank wanted to launch a flagship report on climate change and migration but were concerned that they would be able to do little more than summarize existing research on the topic. Also around this time, Dr. de Sherbinin had approached a geographer, Dr. Bryan Jones, at the City University of New York (CUNY) who was using a spatial population distribution dataset created at CIESIN to project population distribution out to 2100 under different development scenarios. Dr. de Sherbinin approached Dr. Jones about incorporating climate impacts, such as changes in crop yield, water availability, and coastal inundation, into his model because these could have potentially large effects on future population distribution. They presented this idea to the World Bank, which then funded the modeling work that was published in the flagship report. Dr. de Sherbinin brought some members onto the team from CIESIN: Susana Adamo, a demographer, Valentina Mara, a statistician, and GIS experts. The World Bank had produced two prior reports with climate scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), so they brought PIK researchers on to work on Groundswell as well. Title: Evaluating Proxy Influence and Reconstruction Skill in Data Assimilation Based Climate Field Reconstructions Using Extremal Depth Lead PI: Jason Smerdon Length of Project: > 1 year (ongoing) Geographic Location: Global Disciplines Involved: Statistics, Climate Sciences Dr. Jason Smerdon, head of the PaleoDynamics Lab and Research Professor in Ocean and Climate Physics at the Earth Institute’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), leads the project Evaluating Proxy Influence and Reconstruction Skill in Data Assimilation Based Climate Field Reconstructions Using Extremal Depth. The goal of this project is to study past climate variability through Climate Field

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Reconstructions (CFRs) that combine model simulations and proxy networks to estimate past temperature and hydroclimate fields.26 Dr. Smerdon knew a statistician would be needed to complete these past reconstructions, so he approached a statistician, Dr. Bo Li, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and brought her onto the project. Together they applied for a grant through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS) because this division fit the statistical facet of their project the best. Because he was aware of the interdisciplinary nature of their proposal, Dr. Smerdon requested that an additional proposal be pulled from a separate NSF Program - Paleo Perspectives on Climate Change (P2C2) because they would be more familiar with the climate science aspects of this proposal. Despite this mixed review panel, their proposal was denied two years in a row. It was only when they proceeded to apply to NSF-P2C2 directly that they received funding.

26 Harris, T. (2018, Jul). Evaluating Proxy Influence and Reconstruction Skill in Data Assimilation based Climate Field

Reconstructions Using Extremal Depth. Paper presented at the meeting of Joint Statistical Meetings, Vancouver Convention Centre.

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Appendix A: Interview Questions All interviews were conducted by Kaitlyn Coomes. Below is the list of questions that guided each interview.

1. Tell me about a specific interdisciplinary project that you led. Please describe the project briefly and the disciplines involved.

2. How did you identify the interdisciplinary problem, and what was your process of securing funding?

a. Did the problem lead to the funding, or did a funding opportunity come first? b. Was the funding you received adequate to support the project you originally

envisioned? 3. At what stage in developing the research/project questions did you decide to bring

someone/others from another discipline? a. Were they involved from the outset? b. If not, what led you to add them down the line?

4. How did you determine the right disciplines necessary, and the individuals? 5. What do you think made this interdisciplinary project work well? 6. In what ways did having multiple perspectives, research approaches, and training benefit your

project? 7. What were some challenges you faced working with someone (or people) from different

disciplines and how did you overcome them? 8. Do you think being part of the Earth Institute changed the process or outcome in any way? 9. What information and research/logistical support could the Earth Institute have provided that

could have further strengthened this project? 10. Would you have done anything differently, looking back? Is there anything that you would

change about how you approach future collaborations? 11. Beyond this specific project are there other projects in the past where you haven’t succeeded

in bringing in other interdisciplinary teams but you’ve wanted to? 12. Do you know of any other EI or CU colleagues that have had experience with working on an

interdisciplinary project that we should also interview?