Indian American climate scientist Aradhna Tripati has won an annual research award from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) honoring those translating discoveries into measurable benefits for society.
The annual Public Impact Research Awards, presented by the UCLA Office of Research and Creative Activities recognize faculty whose scholarship delivers measurable good in the world and reflects the university’s enduring commitment to service, according to a university release.
Tripati is a professor in the Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences and Founding director, Center for Developing Leadership in Science. Her work bridges science, equity and community empowerment.
As a climate scientist, she partners with organizations like Esperanza Community Housing to document how rising temperatures affect Los Angeles neighborhoods, particularly low-income communities that are most vulnerable to displacement.
Her research highlights how environmental, racial and economic justice are deeply connected — and how collaboration can drive change.
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Through UCLA’s Center for Developing Leadership in Science — the first academic center of its kind in the nation — Tripati and her team have supported more than 350 fellows, including students, faculty and community partners, in building careers in environmental science.
The center’s work has contributed to major environmental justice victories, including the successful campaign to end neighborhood oil drilling in Los Angeles and statewide legislation to create buffer zones around drilling sites.
“My goal for this work is to catalyze community-driven science for a more just world,” Tripati said. “The consequence of this work is that in the face of threats, including climate change and inequality, we can build a future where everyone can have their basic needs met.”
She added that the work ahead is about expanding access and collaboration.
“I imagine a future where Indigenous stewards have access to environmental genomics and carbon monitoring tools to care for land, raise revenue and uphold their sovereignty, where environmental justice communities can hold polluters accountable, and all can access predictive models to navigate climate impacts,” she said. “This kind of work is an investment in our health and futures — now and in the decades ahead.”
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Tripati grew up in Los Angeles and when she was in college, took a general education course on Environmental Geology that ignited her passion for environmental science and geoscience.
She received her PhD in Earth Sciences at UC Santa Cruz where she was a Gates Millennium Scholar, an Ocean Drilling Program Fellow, and a UC Regents’ Fellow – and she received the Aaron Waters Award for Best Thesis Proposal.
She was a research fellow at the University of Cambridge where she held the Thomas Nevile Fellowship in Natural Sciences, a Comer Abrupt Climate Change Fellowship, a National Environmental Research Council Fellowship, and a Marshall Sherfield Fellowship.
Tripati also was a visiting scientist at the California Institute of Technology for several years. She began as an assistant professor at UCLA in 2009 and received tenure in 2014.