Introduction

This book explores the role and importance of interdisciplinary research in addressing key issues in climate and energy decision making.

For over 30 years, an interdisciplinary team of faculty and students anchored at Carnegie Mellon University, joined by investigators and students from a number of other collaborating institutions across North America, Europe, and Australia, have worked together to better understand the global changes that are being caused by both human activities and natural causes. This book tells the story of their successful interdisciplinary work. With each chapter written in the first person, the authors have three key objectives: (1) to document and provide an accessible account of how they have framed and addressed a range of the key problems that are posed by the human dimensions of global change; (2) to illustrate how investigators and graduate students have worked together productively across different disciplines and locations on common problems; and (3) to encourage funders and scholars across the world to undertake similar large-scale interdisciplinary research activities to meet the world’s largest challenges.

Exploring topics such as energy efficiency, public health, and climate adaptation, and with a final chapter dedicated to lessons learned, this innovative volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, energy transitions and environmental studies more broadly.