Harvard Philosopher Stanley Cavell to be Visiting Scholar at Yale

Industrial ecology professor Thomas E. Graedel of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies recently was appointed chair of the Grand Challenges in Environmental Sciences Committee by the National Academy of Sciences. The committee’s role is to identify the most important and challenging scientific questions with the greatest research potential in environmental science today. The study will run through April 30, 2001.

The National Science Foundation’s Directorate of Biological Sciences will sponsor the multidisciplinary study, which will have a 19-member committee representing the following areas of expertise: geosciences, evolutionary and population ecology, environmental economics, environmental toxicology, environmental decisions, atmospheric science and industrial process, biogeochemistry, climate and weather, land use, paleoecology, institutions, oceanography, terrestrial ecosystem ecology, public health, hydrology/environmental engineering/limnology, and agriculture.

Graedel, formerly a scientist at Lucent Technologies, has been on the faculty at Yale for several years, not only in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, but as an adjunct in the departments of chemical engineering and of geology and geophysics. President of the atmospheric sciences section of the American Geophysical Union, he has conducted research in many areas of atmospheric chemistry.

Graedel’s work as a pioneer in the developing area of industrial ecology has led to far-reaching considerations of the total system within which modern technological services are delivered, and related environmental consequences.