Wei Peng, an assistant professor at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, was named to the 2026-2028 cohort of the Early-Career Research Fellows in the Community Resilience track by the Gulf Research Program (GRP) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Fellows receive a financial award along with “mentoring support to provide them with independence, flexibility, and a built-in support network as they take risks on untested research ideas, pursue unique collaborations, and build a network of colleagues,” according to the announcement.
“I have spent much of my career building models to inform climate policy decisions,” Peng said. “What excites me most about this fellowship is the opportunity to apply these tools to issues that directly affect communities in the U.S. Gulf states, from the environmental impacts of data center expansion to the health risks of extreme heat and air pollution co-exposure.”
Udi Ofer, the John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs and Co. Visiting Professor and Lecturer of Public and International Affairs, received a $50,000 grant from The Just Trust to hold a two-day convening on Princeton’s campus in November that will bring together 16 bipartisan policy advocacy organizations to turn two-party principles on criminal justice into concrete policy proposals. This work continues Ofer’s 2025 engagement with the same groups, where both sides pledged support on four principles to improve the criminal justice system.
“Under each of the four principles, the 16 organizations, which range from the ACLU to CPAC, will try to agree through a consensus model on five to eight criminal justice policies, for a total of 20 to 32, that unite the left and right,” said Ofer. “This will then inform state and federal proposals for reform.”
