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Welcome to the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Research on Climate, Health, and Energy (BIRCHE3) Lab.
Our research focuses on the impacts of energy use - typically at the household level - on air pollution, climate, and health. While progress on providing clean household energy arguably follows development trajectories, there is need to accelerate this transition through innovative policy and dissemination approaches. Our research group builds the evidence base for these transitions based on health, environmental, and economic benefits using the multidisciplinary field of Environmental Health Sciences as the foundation of our work. We use and develop lower-cost sensors to objectively answer questions where evidence is lacking and explore novel techniques to link vulnerable populations with effective interventions.

Recent Publications (see more)

Exposure Contrasts of Pregnant Women during the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network Randomized Controlled Trial

Johnson, M., Pillarisetti, A., Piedrahita, R., Balakrishnan, K., Peel, J. L., Steenland, K., Underhill, L. J., Rosa, G., Kirby, M. A., Díaz-Artiga, A., McCracken, J., Clark, M. L., Waller, L., Chang, H. H., Wang, J., Dusabimana, E., Ndagijimana, F., Sambandam, S., … Mukhopadhyay, K. (2022). Exposure Contrasts of Pregnant Women during the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network Randomized Controlled Trial. In Environmental Health Perspectives (Vol. 130, Issue 9). Environmental Health Perspectives. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp10295

Particulates and anaemia in India (Invited Commentary)

Pillarisetti, A., & Balakrishnan, K. (2022). Particulates and anaemia in India. In Nature Sustainability. Springer Science and Business Media LLC. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00943-3

Blog

Vaclav Smil in the Times Magazine: “This is where we are in terms of global civilization: This transition has to happen on a billion and trillion scales.”

Some thoughts on Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility

Bill McKibben previsualizes a world without combustion

LRB: 26 Pieces for COP26

Jim Salter at Ars Technica: “Learn to think in sed, awk, and grep”

Data Science Community Newsletter: COVID on campus – Worse this year than last?

“And so on. Or else.”

“Face masks make it harder to hear, but amplification can help”

Clear communication: NYU’s Céline Gounder on the Ezra Klein Show

Sherry Turkle on time and the pandemic: “a liminal time, a time out of time”

You don't get what you expect, you get what you inspect.