This event is part of the Institute for Public Knowledge's Public Forum Series on Sandy, Climate Change and the Future of New York City, organized with the Marron Institute on Cities and the Urban Environment.

A few weeks ago, New York City--along with a long swath of North America's Atlantic coast and several Carribean islands--was battered by Superstorm Sandy, a weather system that caused unprecedented damage to hundreds of communities. The Institute for Public Knowledge is organizing a Public Forum at NYU to think broadly about this storm, climate change, and the city of New York. How do we prepare for a future with more frequent and violent storms? What are the roles for government agencies, private organizations, and individual citizens in emergency preparedness? What are the public health implications--both long-term and short? Does New York need a massive design intervention, or some new housing codes? When we rebuild, where should we rebuild--and how?

This forum will feature panelists Heidi Cullen (Climate Watch), Klaus Jacob (Columbia/SIPA), Dale Jamieson (NYU/Environmental Studies), and Eric Klinenberg (NYU/IPK/Sociology), and it will be moderated by Chelsea Clinton (Oxford/NYU).

Participant Biographies

Chelsea Clinton was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1980, and has lived in Washington, Palo Alto, Oxford, New York and London. She holds a B.A. from Stanford, a MPhil from Oxford and a MPH from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. Chelsea is a special correspondent for NBC News and is currently pursuing a doctorate at Oxford. Chelsea also works at New York University, the Clinton Foundation and with the Clinton Global Initiative. She previously worked at McKinsey & Company and Avenue Capital. Chelsea serves on the boards of the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, the School of American Ballet, Common Sense Media and the Weill Cornell Medical College. She and her husband, Marc, live in New York City.

Heidi Cullen serves as Chief Climatologist for Climate Central — a non-profit science journalism organization headquartered in Princeton, NJ. She is a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Cullen is the author of The Weather of the Future published by Harper Collins. Before joining Climate Central, where she reports on climate and energy issues, Dr. Cullen served as The Weather Channel’s first on-air climate expert and helped create Forecast Earth, a weekly television series focused on issues related to climate change and the environment. Prior to that Dr. Cullen worked as a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO. She received the NOAA Climate & Global Change Fellowship and spent two years at Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society working to apply long-range climate forecasts to the water resources sector in Brazil and Paraguay. She is a member of the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society and the Society of Environmental Journalists. Dr. Cullen also serves as a member of the NOAA Science Advisory Board. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Columbia University and went on to receive a Ph.D. in climatology and ocean-atmosphere dynamics at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.

Klaus Jacob's analysis of transportation infrastructure for New York State in 2011 in many ways anticipated the impact of Sandy on NYC. Dr. Jacob has worked at Columbia University for over forty years. He started as research associate in geophysics and seismology at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University (1968-73). Since 1973 he has been a Senior Research Scientist at LDEO, a position from which he retired in 2001. Presently, Professor Jacob is a part-time Special Research Scientist at LDEO, combined with Adjunct Professor position at SIPA (2000-present). He has also taught at the Department of Environmental Sciences, Barnard College (1999-2005), and the Graduate School for Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (2001-2003).

Dale Jamieson is Director of Environmental Studies at New York University, where he is also Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy, and Affiliated Professor of Law. Formerly he was Henry R. Luce Professor in Human Dimensions of Global Change at Carleton College, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he was the only faculty member to have won both the Dean's award for research in the social sciences and the Chancellor's award for research in the humanities. He has held visiting appointments at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Cornell, Princeton, Stanford, Oregon, Arizona State University, and Monash and the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia. He is also past president of the International Society for Environmental Ethics.

Eric Klinenberg is Director of NYU's Institute for Public Knowledge, and Professor of Sociology, Public Policy, and Media, Culture, and Communications. Klinenberg is the author of Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, which was published in February 2012 by the Penguin Press, as well as the award-winning books Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago and Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media. Klinenberg is a prominent public sociologist whose work has been featured in the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Smithsonian, Time Magazine, and National Public Radio. He has published in journals including the American Sociological Review, Theory and Society, and Ethnography, and has contributed to popular outlets such as The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, The London Review of Books, Le Monde Diplomatique, Slate, and the radio program This American Life.

photo courtesy Sam Horine.