SANS Seminar Series

A world-renowned energy scientist and expert in renewable energy, climate policy and sustainable development will kick off the School of Agricultural and Natural Sciences’ 2026 Fall Seminar Series in September.

Dr. Daniel Kammen is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Energy and Climate Justice in the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering and professor in the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Kammen will speak on “Environmental Justice Lives!” on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026, at 11 a.m. in Carver Hall Auditorium on the campus of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Princess Anne.

His research is currently focused on: decarbonization of power systems around the world; energy access and social justice; materials science for low-carbon economies; big-data approaches to clean transportation and the electrification of health facilities across Africa. 

He most recently served as senior advisor for Energy and Innovation at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID: 2021-2022). Kammen was appointed the first Environment and Climate Partnership for the Americas (ECPA) Fellow by Secretary of State Hilary R. Clinton in April 2010 and served as Science Envoy for Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama (2016-2017).

He plays a leadership role in the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute (ROSEI). His laboratory website is https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/daniel-kammen/.

Kammen serves on the board of the Tetiaroa Society, dedicated to marine conservation and cultural survival in French Polynesia. He is also part of the Blue Climate Initiative, dedicated to accelerating ocean-based strategies to tackle climate challenges. He is working toward opening a Johns Hopkins University campus on the Kenyan coast, where a core research and teaching faculty will be based around a sustainable Blue Economy. Kammen works closely with NTNU (Trondheim, Norway) at the University Centre in Svalbard on arctic sustainability and concerns over polar deep-seabed mining.

He has founded or is on the board of more than 10 companies, and has served the state of California and U.S. federal government in expert and advisory capacities. Kammen was the first chief technical specialist for renewable energy and energy efficiency at the World Bank (2010–2011).

He has also served as a contributing or coordinating lead author on various reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 1999. The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. 

Kammen was educated in physics at Cornell and Harvard universities and held postdoctoral positions at the California Institute of Technology and Harvard. Before moving to Johns Hopkins, he worked at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. 

Kammen serves on the Advisory Committee for Energy & Environment for the X-Prize Foundation. He is on the board of Native Renewables (Flagstaff, AZ); the Chabot Space and Science Center (Oakland, CA), The Human Needs Project/Kibera Town Center (Nairobi, Kenya). He is a member of the Diversity Scholars Network, https://lsa.umich.edu/ncid/engagement-opportunities/diversity-scholars-network.html

Kammen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020 and to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2025. He cohosts the “Energy Matters” podcast with Claire Broido, which is available on streaming services and directly at https://energymatters.world

Dr. Cassandra Extavour, the Timken professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard, is the featured speaker at the second fall seminar on Sept. 17.

The seminar series will continue through Nov. 19. Please check back for more details.