Presented to Michael Gevelber (College of Engineering)
Professor Michael Gevelber is honored for exemplary career achievements and contributions to sustainable energy and climate. He has been a faculty member in Boston University’s Mechanical Engineering Department since 1988. He has an undergraduate degree in Physics (1978) with honors from Brown University and a Master’s (1984, Control of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion) and PhD (1988, Control of Czochralsi Crystal Growth) from MIT in Mechanical Engineering, focusing on controls. He is a co-founder of Aeolus Building Efficiency and winner of the MIT Clean Energy Prize (2013), energy efficiency track. Professor Gevelber’s energy-related research has focused on developing better control approaches for optimizing commercial building HVAC systems, developing sensor systems for determining real-time occupancy for smart buildings (funded by ARPAE), and developing an advanced building leak measurement system (DOE’s Building America program). His research has also focused on Developing Electrification Strategies to Decarbonize Boston University’s Charles River Campus conducted with six undergraduate students in collaboration with facilities engineers and staff, and has led to briefing several times BU’s Operations staff (funded by Campus Climate Lab). Professor Gevelber has served on BU’s Climate Action Plan Task Force (BU’s Climate Action Plan, adopted by the Trustees in 2017), and he earlier co-chaired the university’s energy working group. Outside of his work at BU, he has served on the city of Newton’s Energy Commission since 2012, contributed to determining Newton’s greenhouse inventory (updated 2021), writing sections in its Climate Action Plan (2019), and is currently co-leading efforts to develop BERDO (Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure) regulations for Newton’s commercial and institutional buildings.
 

Sustainability Champion Award: This award is given to a current member of the BU faculty or staff who has made a significant contribution to research or practice in the realm of sustainability, climate change, and/or equity and justice.

Presented to Alina McIntyre (School of Public Health)
Alina McIntyre is a doctoral candidate in the Boston University School of Public Health’s Department of Environmental Health who puts community-driven climate justice at the center of everything she does. She is not only a driving force of community-based participatory research methods in her own department, but she also uses her resources to highlight and celebrate the knowledge of community members in Chelsea, MA on extreme heat resilience and air pollution exposure through C-HEAT, a partnership between Boston University and the grassroots organization GreenRoots, Inc. This community-engaged research collaboration aims to build the capacity for environmental justice communities, Chelsea and East Boston, to respond to extreme heat events. McIntyre’s dedication to elevating qualitative methods in epidemiology is based on a strong belief in the power of the stories and experiences of people impacted by climate change and related exposures. She has demonstrated this through the C-HEAT Photovoice/Fotovoz project, a participatory action research project using storytelling through photography to highlight how communities cope with heat. Alina has inspired many other students, research staff, and faculty to approach this work through new methods and collaborations, centering justice and partnering with community members. She has made important contributions to better understand the lived experience of heat and pollution exposure in a continually overburdened community of the Boston region but has also pushed her department toward deeper considerations of justice.
 
Peter Fox-Penner Graduate Student Award: This award is given to a current BU graduate student who has made a significant contribution to research or practice in the realm of sustainability, climate change, and/or equity and justice. This student award honors the original founder of the Institute.

Presented to Emma Longo (College of Communication)
Emma Longo has distinguished herself through Boston University’s climate communication research, working as an undergraduate research assistant on the project Data and Misinformation in an Era of Sustainability and Climate Change Crises jointly funded by the Institute for Global Sustainability and the Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering. Alongside the research team’s activities, Emma developed her own research project entitled, How Fossil Fuel Companies Use Native Advertisements to Promote Climate Denialism in US Media, focused on The New York Times and The Washington Post. Native advertisements, which appear like articles in these news outlets, are one of the ways fossil fuel companies attempt to shape perceptions on climate science. By investigating the covert advertising strategies used by fossil fuel corporations, her study helps researchers to better understand the origins of climate misinformation that may influence the public. Longo submitted her academic article to a leading academic conference, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Her academic paper was accepted by the Communicating Science, Health, Environment, and Risk Division, and she traveled to Washington, DC in August of this year to present her work in a poster session‚ a rare honor for an undergraduate.
 
Undergraduate Student Award: This award is given to a current BU undergraduate student who has made a significant contribution to research or practice in the realm of sustainability, climate change, and/or equity and justice.