Carolyn Snyder

Carolyn’s love of the outdoors and commitment to the environment began as a child with her parents reading The Lorax to her at bedtime.  In her desire to understand the natural world, she studied a wide variety of scientific fields as an undergraduate at Amherst College, including a double major in Biology and Geology.  Her interest in scientific research had begun at the age of sixteen, during two years of research in bacterial genetics at the National Cancer Institute.  During her undergraduate years, she expanded her experiences from microbiology to geologic mapping, community ecology, invasive species, stable isotopes, biogeochemistry, and tropical nutrient cycling.

Carolyn realized, however, that the challenges of the future entail more than scientific understanding.  Thus, she chose to spend two years studying in Master’s programs in the United Kingdom on a Marshall Scholarship.  At the University of Oxford, she completed an M.S. in Environmental Change and Management, an interdisciplinary program that enabled her to broaden and deepen her understanding of the economic, social, and international context of environmental issues.  Her master’s dissertation researched questions of sustainable business: To What Extent Can Business Act as a Lever of Change for Sustainability?  The Quest of Bill Ford to Green Ford Motor Company.  Carolyn believes that a scientific understanding of the Earth’s recent history is imperative for a discussion of current environmental changes, and thus she chose to complete an M.Phil. in Quaternary Science at the University of Cambridge, researching past climate conditions to provide constraints for future climate predictions: Palaeoclimatic Perspectives on Climate Sensitivity to Carbon Dioxide.

Motivated by a strong belief that we could be doing so much more with the science that we already know, Carolyn seeks to act as a synthesizer and translator between the scientific community and the greater public.  Her research investigates methods to better constrain and quantify the major uncertainties in our understanding and predictions of anthropogenic climate change.  She is also interested in how such scientific knowledge can be represented for accurate and effective audience interpretation and to inspire action.  Carolyn is using the freedom and resources of IPER to focus her studies on two main fields: earth system complexity and human behavior and decision-making.  The amazing breadth in expertise at Stanford has given her the opportunity to expand her knowledge into completely new disciplines and paradigms of thought.  In addition, last summer Carolyn was supported to participate in the Complex Systems Summer School in Beijing, co-sponsored by the Santa Fe Institute and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.  Carolyn is a joint National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow and Gabilan Stanford Graduate Fellow.