Rishi Sugla , Ph.D.

Climate Resilience Scientist Climate Impacts Group

Rishi’s professional mission is to build justice-centered climate adaptation plans co-created with frontline communities. Rishi has a deep interest in working at the intersection of science, storytelling, social justice, and technology.

Areas of Expertise

Climate justice Ecophysiology Marine biogeography and geology

Bio

Rishi is a research scientist at the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group. His work is transdisciplinary and combines elements of science, marine ecology, environmental justice, and storytelling/communications. Rishi is interested in how historic legacies of inequity and oppression can be addressed throughout the process of creating and implementing climate adaptation plans. He has worked closely with frontline communities struggling against extractive industries and climate impacts to build collective power. Rishi hopes to use his position at the Climate Impacts Group to create new projects and programs that continue to amplify the work and capacity of frontline communities and land and water protectors. Rishi received his Ph.D. in Earth Science from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Research Interests

  • Co-production of knowledge
  • Building community power
  • Citizen science and/or technology as a tool towards data sovereignty and climate adaptation
  • Complex systems based thinking applied to social movements and climate justice
  • Radical futurisms centered on climate justice
  • Storytelling as a tool to build power