Rausser College of Natural Resources is excited to welcome four faculty members this academic year. Their research expertise spans environmental economics, climate science, earth sciences, and biogeochemistry.
We look forward to their contributions to our community. Welcome to Rausser College!
Ignacio Banares-Sanchez
Agricultural & Resource Economics
Ignacio Banares-Sanchez’s research intersects environmental, development, and urban economics to examine how fast-growing cities in the developing world deliver basic services when governments lack the capacity. In recent work, Banares-Sanchez studied trash collection in Accra, Ghana, where households pay informal waste collectors who travel door-to-door on tricycles and haul away their trash; whether Chinese subsidies for solar manufacturing drove down the global price of solar panels; and how the construction of Paris's sewer network in the 19th century reshaped the city.
Banares-Sanchez earned his PhD in economics from the London School of Economics, where he also completed an MPA in public and economic policy. He also holds engineering degrees from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Feng Jiang
Environmental Science, Policy, and Management
Feng Jiang blends oceanography and meteorology to study how interactions between the ocean and atmosphere shape Earth’s climate, particularly behaviors not reflected in current climate models. Her research focuses on periodic fluctuations in sea surface temperature and air pressure across the equatorial Pacific Ocean (known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO), its global connections, and long-term changes in the tropical Pacific. She recently found that climate variations in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans are largely driven by ENSO, rather than serving as an early predictor of a state change. Jiang also identified a robust, self-regulating process in the upper tropical Pacific that drives the observed long-term cooling of the region.
Jiang earned a PhD in meteorology from the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and currently works as a senior researcher at Seoul National University.
She will officially join the College on January 1, 2027.
Andrew Jones
Energy & Resources Group
Andrew Jones’s research informs efforts by social scientists, resource managers, and urban planners to make energy, water, food, and urban systems more resilient to climate change. Much of his work combines quantitative modeling and data analysis to study the interface between human and environmental systems with a goal of understanding how they influence one another at decision-relevant scales. He currently advises California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot on science and technology issues affecting natural resource policy, and on connecting scientific and policy communities.
Jones spent 15 years at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he led the Earth Systems and Society Program Domain, and previously served as deputy director of the Climate Readiness Institute. A two-time graduate of the Energy & Resources Group, Jones earned an MS in 2007 and a PhD in 2012, and has taught as an adjunct assistant professor in ERG since 2020.
He will begin his new role on January 1, 2027.
Eric Slessarev
Environmental Science, Policy, and Management
Eric Slessarev studies how soil forms and differs across the planet, and how its chemistry governs the movement of carbon and nutrients through terrestrial ecosystems. Much of his work aims to make global models dynamic by identifying the environmental controls that shape soil as it develops. Slessarev previously mapped the drivers of soil pH worldwide, traced the lingering influence of the last ice age on mineral weathering, and identified regions where soil minerals favor organic carbon storage.
Slessarev earned a PhD in ecology, evolution, and marine biology from UC Santa Barbara. He spent four years at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory before joining Yale University, where he most recently served as an assistant professor and a member of the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture.