Environment and Sustainability

The Environment and Sustainability Research Cluster aims to facilitate, cultivate, and produce multi-disciplinary, collaborative, and innovative research focused on sustainable environment, urban sustainability and smart cities, and social resilience. It brings together scholars from the disciplines of Economics, Sociology, Psychology, and Public Policy in an effort to critically inform public debate and seek solutions to the challenges posed by climate changes, urbanization, natural hazards, man-made disasters (e.g., terrorism, wars), and transboundary crises (e.g., financial crisis, epidemics, cyber warfare). It strives to advance knowledge on how sustainability can be pursued over the long term on national, regional, and global levels as well as promote sustainable development practices. It also strives to enhance the capacity of individuals and communities to cope with challenges and bounce back after a challenging condition or traumatic experience.

The Cluster aims to facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue and collaborations across the university through informal gatherings, workshops, formal seminars and conferences, submission of joint external grant proposals, and having joint publications. Besides, it aims to establish a strong research network with local and foreign universities, research centers, and policy groups through seminars, conferences, and research collaborations. Also, it aims to mobilize citizens to become important agents of change in sustainable development and promote the well-being of communities in times of adversity through communications and outreach activities. These activities include newsletters, webinars, awareness events (e.g., public forum), school presentations, public talks, and exhibitions. It is expected that the work of the Cluster can support policymakers and practitioners to make evidence-based decisions for promoting sustainable development and enhancing social resilience as well as engage citizens in adopting good practices for sustainable development.

Cluster Coordinator
Asst. Prof. Tang Cheng Keat (Economics)	Cheng Keat is an applied microeconomist and his research interests include Urban and Housing Economics, Transportation Economics, Environmental Economics and Economics of Crime. Specifically, his research focuses on quantifying the externalities of driving, measuring the cost of climate change, valuing non-market amenities using revealed preference framework, understanding how neighborhood quality can influence various socio-economic outcomes, and conducting policy evaluations intended to minimize negative externalities in cities (e.g congestion, crime, pollution etc).
Asst. Prof Yan Jubo (Economics)	Jubo’s research interests include behavioral economics, experimental economics, and applied microeconomics. Currently, his research focuses on 1) The impact of behavioral factors (e.g., loss aversion, salience, and social preference) on individuals’ responses to public policies; 2) The role of motivated reasoning in individual and group decision making; 3) Policy evaluation in a development context (e.g., human resource allocation and environmental issues).
Cluster Members
Asst. Prof KIM Soojin (PPGA)	Soojin's current research interests include Public Budgeting and Financial Management, New Institutionalism, Contracting Out (Back-in), Public-Private Partnerships, Citizen Participation/Satisfaction in the Public Sector and Mixed Methods Research Design and Analysis.
Assoc. Prof WANG Jue (PPGA)	Jue’s research interests lie in the field of research and innovation policy, particularly government-university-industry interaction, knowledge production, technology commercialization and entrepreneurial activities.
Assoc. Prof Sulfikar Amir (Sociology)	Sulfikar's research interests primarily focus on examining institutional, political, and epistemological dimensions of scientific knowledge and technological systems. He has conducted research on technological nationalism, development and globalisation, nuclear politics, risk and disaster, design studies, city and infrastructure, and resilience. Sulfikar is currently working on a number of research projects that look into the resilient nature of urban-situated sociotechnical systems. These includes a series of risk perception surveys and mitigation on the Covid-19 pandemic.
Assoc. Prof Md Saidul Islam (Sociology)	Within the two broad fields of his specialization, environmental sociology and international development, Saidul is particularly known for his research on food and global aquaculture. His scholarship and interests also span in other substantive yet related areas such as neoliberal globalization, sustainability, gender and labor, social power, environmentalism, climate change, disaster vulnerabilities, social and environmental justice, and religion and human rights.
Assoc. Prof Chia Wai Mun (Economics)	Prof Chia's areas of interest include international macroeconomics and cost-benefit analysis. Her current researach focuses on the effects of real and nominal shocks in a small open economy under different exchange rate regimes, valuation of nonmarket goods through stated preference approach, and estimation of value of a statistical life.
Assoc. Prof James Ang (Economics)	James' research has concentrated on how regions and countries can accelerate growth. It includes topics on innovative production, productivity trends, international diffusion of knowledge, human capital, quality of education, institutions, income inequality, financial development and liberalization, savings and investment, environmental pollution, and macroeconomic stability.
Prof Quah Teong Ewe, Euston (Economics)	Professor Quah's area of expertise are Environmental Economics, Resource Allocation and Cost-Benefit Analysis, Law and Economics and Household Economics. He advises the Singapore Government in various Ministries and was a Member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Strategies Sub-Committee on Energy and the Environment.
Asst. Prof Akshar Saxena (Economics)	Akshar’s research focuses on health economics and public economics. He works on the interactions between individual’s health and labor decisions, and government’s policies on sin-taxes, healthcare financing, and social security. Within the environment and sustainability sphere, he is working on the link between economic activity, air-pollution, and health and labor outcomes and the sustainability of food and agricultural policies in relation to providing adequate nutrition in developing countries.
Assoc. Prof Michael Gumert (Psychology)	Michael’s educational background lies in animal behavior, environmental science, and psychology, and his area of specialization is primatology. His research focuses on long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis), the common monkey of Southeast Asia, and he was lead editor of the book, Monkeys on the Edge (2011, CUP). His most recognized work is on tool use in wild Burmese long-tailed macaques of Myanmar and southern Thailand, while he has also studied macaque social behavior in Kalimantan, and addressed population and management issues in Singapore with NParks and other organizations. Currently, he is co-developing an international collaboration for region-wide population level studies of M. fascicularis. Lastly, he dabbles in conservation psychology and evolutionary psychology research - particularly, with his NTU students.