In April 2025, the University of Toronto announced the launch of the Lawson Climate Institute, made possible by Brian and Joannah Lawson’s transformative $60-million gift. Established to galvanize and accelerate the university’s contributions to addressing climate change, the Institute strengthens U of T’s capacity to advance climate-positive technologies, policies, and incentives.
LCI is pleased to announce the University of Toronto Expert Advisory Committee. Composed of university faculty and staff with relevant knowledge, experience and expertise, the Committee will provide support and guidance to the Executive Steering Committee and the Institute’s Director, advise on Institute activities, assist with collaboration, and advise on emerging trends. Deliberations within the committee will also help ensure alignment with the Institute’s mandate, reinforce integration across the four LCI pillars, and identify opportunities to deepen collaboration and accelerate progress.
Building on the university’s longstanding leadership in sustainability and environmental stewardship, the Lawson Climate Institute integrates multidisciplinary expertise spanning engineering, science, finance, law, economics, business, and agriculture. Through intentional collaboration with governments, industry, and public-sector partners, LCI is structured to translate solutions-oriented research into scalable technologies and equitable, practical climate policy.
As the Lawson Climate Institute advances its mission, this Expert Advisory Committee will play a critical role helping us showcase and reinforce the University of Toronto’s role as a global leader in climate research and expertise.
Meet the members:
Steve Easterbrook
School of the Environment
Steve Easterbrook received his Ph.D. from Imperial College, London. He studies the development of computational models for understanding climate change, along with the role of models and data visualizations for sharing that knowledge about climate and sustainability with other communities. He teaches courses on Systems Thinking, Climate Literacy, and Software Design.
Jessica Green
Political Science
Professor Green’s publications include Rethinking Private Authority: Agents and Entrepreneurs in Global Environmental Governance (Princeton University Press, 2014), articles on carbon markets, delegation to non-state actors, transnational regulation, regime complexity, organizational ecology.
Jody Grewal
Management (University of Toronto Mississauga)
Jody Grewal is an Assistant Professor of Accounting in the Department of Management and the Institute for Management & Innovation at the University of Toronto Mississauga, with a cross appointment to the Accounting Area at the Rotman School of Management. She examines the capital market effects and real effects of financial and sustainability information disclosed voluntarily and under mandatory reporting regimes.
Marianne Hatzopoulou
Civil & Mineral Engineering
Marianne Hatzopoulou is Professor in the Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering at the University of Toronto and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Transport Decarbonization and Air Quality. She leads the Transportation and Air Quality (TRAQ) research group studying the interactions between transportation, air quality, climate change, and public health. Prof. Hatzopoulou is also the Director of Positive Zero Transport Futures, a living lab ecosystem for testing transport decarbonization innovations with positive societal outcomes.
Matthew Hoffman
Political Science (University of Toronto Scarborough)
Matthew Hoffmann is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto Scarborough and co-director of the Environmental Governance Lab. He teaches classes on international relations, global governance, and environmental and sustainability politics. His research on decarbonization, climate change and environmental politics has been published in 4 books and over 50 journal articles and book chapters.
Marney Isaac
Global Development Studies (University of Toronto Scarborough)
Dr. Marney Isaac is a Professor in the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences and the Department of Global Development Studies at the University of Toronto. Dr. Isaac holds the Canada Research Chair in Agroecosystems & Development and is the Director of the University of Toronto’s Sustainable Food and Farming Futures Cluster. Her research develops novel social-ecological methods to generate contemporary insights into sustainable agroecosystem policy and practice.
Shoshanna Saxe
Civil & Mineral Engineering
Dr. Shoshanna Saxe is an Associate Professor in the University of Toronto’s Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering, and Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Sustainable Infrastructure. She investigates the relationship between the infrastructure we build and the society we create to identify opportunities – and pathways – to better align infrastructure provision with sustainability. Her research focuses around two main questions: 1) What should we build? and 2) how should we build it?
Jeffrey Sun
Economics
Jeffrey E. Sun is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto. Professor Sun is interested in combining climate science and structural economic modeling to study climate impacts in equilibrium. Professor Sun also develops computational tools for solving rich heterogeneous-agent models.
Olivier Trescases
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Olivier Trescases (BASc, MASc, PhD) received his PhD degree in electrical engineering at the University of Toronto in 2007. His expertise is in the area of energy management, high-frequency/high-density power electronics, battery management systems, electric vehicles and power integrated circuits, including wide bandgap semiconductors.