Professor of Earth & Environment Lucy Hutyra, an international leader in earth sciences and climate change research, has been named a 2023 MacArthur Fellow, receiving an $800,000, no-strings-attached fellowship — a so-called “genius award” — honoring her path-breaking research on the impacts of urbanization on environmental carbon cycle dynamics and her potential to make important societal contributions in the future.
“This is just about the greatest honor I can imagine receiving,” Hutyra says. “To have my peers select me in such an anonymous and rigorous way highlights the impact of my group’s work and the importance of focusing on climate solutions in cities. I’m very grateful.”
Professor Lucy Hutyra joined the Arts & Sciences faculty in 2009. She was trained as a physical scientist, receiving her BA in Forest Ecology and Management from the University of Washington and her PhD in Earth & Planetary Sciences from Harvard University; but, in recent years, her work has become interdisciplinary, focusing on the climate and ecology of cities.
Professor Hutyra’s lab is best known for its path breaking work on measuring and modeling urban greenhouse gas fluxes and advancing the understanding of carbon cycling in cities. Her work in this area combines a unique mix of field measurements, data synthesis, and modeling; and her approach, which focuses on quantifying sources and sinks of greenhouse gasses from soils, plants, and humans, is unique within the field. Through her science, Professor Hutyra is elucidating how ecological processes and human activity are jointly impacting regional greenhouse gas budgets.
“Cities are grappling with the intertwined challenges of climate change and sustainable development. The choices we make about where people live, the infrastructure we construct, and the ecosystems we choose to preserve have far-reaching consequences,” Hutyra says. “We already know many of the solutions, the real challenge before us is implementing place-based solutions that produce thriving, just, and equitable societies. My work strives to understand, quantify, and make actionable the scientific information we need to implement climate solutions for cities now.”
Professor Hutyra has published nearly 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters in edited volumes. She received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a National Academy of Science Kavli Fellow, and serves on the NASA Earth Science Federal Advisory Committee. At BU, she serves as the Director of the BU Biogeosciences Program and the Associate Director for the BU URBAN interdisciplinary doctoral program. She is also the Co-Lead for the BU Campus Climate Lab, bringing sustainability research into practice across the university.
Beyond scholarly research, Hutyra has focused extensively on graduate education, training students how to apply basic research to advance the livability of our communities. Her excellence in student advising was recognized with a College of Arts & Sciences Templeton Award in 2015, and again in 2022, when she won the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Education within the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University.
“Professor Hutyra has made extraordinary contributions to interdisciplinarity through her teaching, research, student mentoring, and service. Her success has impacted her department, other units with the College of Arts & Sciences, and created bridges across schools at Boston University,” says Arts & Sciences Dean Stan Sclaroff. “She is a widely lauded international leader in earth sciences and climate change research, and we are delighted to see Lucy’s path breaking work recognized with the MacArthur Fellowship. It is a recognition that is so well deserved, and we are proud and happy for Lucy.”
Read more in The Brink.