PRFDHR Seminar: Climate change and migration, Professor Solomon Hsiang

Using social media data for over 2 billion individuals, Professor Hsiang uses new techniques to study whether climate change is likely to contribute to global migration flows.

Professor Solomon Hsiang directs the Global Policy Laboratory at Berkeley, where his team is integrating econometrics, spatial data science, and machine learning to answer questions that are central to rationally managing planetary resources–such as the economic value of the global climate, how the UN can fight wildlife poaching, the effectiveness of treaties governing the oceans, and whether satellites and AI can be combined to monitor the entire planet in real time. 

Professor Hsiang earned a BS in Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science and a BS in Urban Studies and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he received a PhD in Sustainable Development from Columbia University. He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Applied Econometrics at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at Princeton University.

Solomon Hsiang is currently the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, a Co-Director at the Climate Impact Lab, Research Associate at the NBER, a National Geographic Explorer, and an Andrew Carnegie Fellow. In 2020, he was awarded the President’s Medal by the Geological Society of America.