Earth Institute Education News

posted: 2007-11-01

Marta Vicarelli, PhD Student in Sustainable Development, shares in the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore


Third year PhD student in Sustainable Development Marta Vicarelli shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize through her work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  Vicarelli has served as the Teaching Assistant for Microeconomics and Policy Analysis for the MPA program in Environmental Science and Policy (MPA-ESP) since the fall of 2006.

Vicarelli worked with the IPCC over the past five years with the Working Group II, which focuses on “Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability.”  She investigated observed changes and responses in natural and managed systems and sectors, and contributed to ‘Chapter 1- Assessment of Observed Changes and Responses in Natural and Managed Systems.’  The IPCC, sharing this prize with former Vice President Al Gore, was awarded the prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

In addition to her work with the IPCC and as a TA for the MPA-ESP program, Vicarelli is also a PhD candidate in Sustainable Development, a program launched by the Earth Institute and the School of International and Public Affairs in 2004.  She is also a research fellow at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Before joining the Sustainable Development program, she received a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia after completing a B.S. in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Ecole Normale Superiere and a Masters of Environmental Economics from Ecole Polytechnique, both in Paris.

Vicarelli’s current field of research is climate change and natural catastrophes risk management and financing, including the balance between the public and private sector on insurance and re-insurance issues, possible partnership between international organizations, the impact of public policies on insurance, and the role that insurance can play in encouraging climate-change mitigation.