On September 29, 2023, EEMI officers Dr. Salah Hassan and Dr. Jonathan Deason met with senior World Bank officials to discuss collaboration between the World Bank and EEMI in the area of climate change capacity building, focusing especially on women and youth empowerment. The World Bank officials were Dr. Mansour Al Shamali, who serves as the Executive Director of EDS 11, representing all of the Middle East country members of the World Bank, and Ambassador Hisham Seifeldin, Alternate Executive Director on the World Bank Board of Executive Directors. After the meeting, Profs. Hassan and Deason had an opportunity to discuss the initiative with GW President Ellen Granberg.
EEMI Affiliate Prof. Ekundayo Shittu strengthened the EEMI relationship with the Qatar Environmental and Energy Research Institute by meeting with EERI Chief Economist Dr. Marcello Contestabile on October 27, 2023 in Doha, Qatar. They discussed research collaboration opportunities, including use of the TIMES integrated assessment model and its evolution from the MARKAL model of over a decade ago. This was a follow-up to a previous meeting between EERI representatives conducted by EEMI Professors Alex Beehler, Salah Hassan, Mukes Kapilashrami and others in the Fall 2022 semester.
EEM Master of Science graduate Alozie Pat-Ekeji reported that he recently received his green card and will be returning to D.C. in the near future.
EEMI Director of Climate Change Dr. Rachael Jonassen was appointed to the ACRP Project 03-77 Panel on "Understanding the Impacts of Climate Change on Forecasting Future Airport Activity Levels," which ties in with some of the adaptation work Dr. Jonasen has done recently for the Asian Development Bank.
EEMI graduate Melis Gursel reported in the Fall 2023 semester that she is starting a new position as Operations Lead of Sustainability and Efficiency Services at the Siemens Corporation in Turkey.
On September 26, 2023, EEMI Director of Operations Dr. Mukes Kapilashrami coordinated an evening symposium for the Business Council on International Understanding in the Lehman Auditorium of the Science and Engineering Hall. The title of the symposium was “Toward a Paradigm Shift of Mental Health in Latin America.” The event was keynoted by Dr. Jarbas Barbosa, Director of the Pan American Health Organization.
EEM Master of Science graduate Neel Bhagwat reported that, since graduating, he has delved into the field of Data Analytics and subsequently transitioned into a role as a Data Scientist at ForwardEdge AI. In that position, he created hate speech and misinformation classifiers and response models that generate contextually-relevant, human-like responses to comments across 30+ news sites. He intends for his career to move towards the intersection of data and climate change policy.
EEM graduate Manyung Emma Hon, who won the GW New Venture Competition with her plastic-degrading microbe concept, reported in the Fall 2023 semester that, after I graduating, she continued developing her climate tech startup, claiming more awards from competitions such as the MIT Climate and Energy Prize, the NYU 300k Entrepreneurs Challenge, and the Columbia Venture Competition.
EEMI Affiliate Prof. Ekundayo Shittu attended as an invited participant at the 9th Arab- American Frontiers Symposium in Doha, Qatar. The event was organized and funded by the National Academies and held at the Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar. At the event, Prof. Shittu also established a relationship with the Texas A&M University at Qatar where he worked with Dr. Dena Ahmed Al Thani, Dr. Mohammed Al-Hashimi and Dr. Dhabia Al Mohannadi.
Dr. Mukes Kapilashrami, EEMI Director of Operations, served as a speaker at the September 18-22,2023 U.S. Trade and Development Administration’s C9nfnene on Infrastructre Reconstruction in Washington, D.C.
EEMI Director of Global Business Sustainability Dr. Salah Hassan hosted an October 29, 2023 panel session with Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for COP27. The title of the session was “Sustainable Development Priorities: Climate Action and the Preparations for COP28”. Dr. Mohieldin was in Dubai during this session, and the panel included participants from the UAE and worldwide. After the session, Dr. Hassan was contacted by one of the lead participants, inviting him to speak and moderate one of the panels at the Green Zone.
On September, 2023, EEMI Director for Food and Water Professor Mark Pollins met with the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food Production and a major Ukrainian investment broker to plan a symposium entitled “Rebuilding Ukraine: A Hard Look at the Agricultural Sector.” The event is planned for March 19, 2024 in the Lehman Auditorium of the GW Science and Engineering Hall. The purposes of the event are to share firsthand experiences of the Ukrainian agricultural community since the commencement of the Russian War of Aggression, to provide a forum to the Minister of Agriculture and Food Production to discuss the harm inflicted upon the Ukrainian agricultural sector, and to connect members of the Ukrainian agricultural community with members of the US agricultural production sector, including equipment suppliers, to convey the needs in Ukraine.
EEMI M.S. alumnus Zgjim Brina reported that he started working as a Project Manager in Kosovo office of the U.S. company KODE Laboratories. The company specializes in providing SaaS that optimizes energy usage in large buildings as well as enables sustainability and comfort. Zgjim’s role includes making sure that the integration of the platform in clients’ HVAC, fire, lighting, and security systems will be as smooth and as efficient as possible. In that capacity, Zgjim handles projects and teams (project engineers, DevOps developers, engineering managers, etc.) from project kickoff to client turnover.
In August 2023, EEMI Director of Global Business Sustainability Dr. Salah Hassan met with Dr. Yasmine Fouad, Egypt’s Minister of the Environment, in Cairo, Egypt. The meeting led to an invitation to offer two CEO-level briefings on sustainability marketing and ESG strategies for climate advocacy to be conducted in the near future.