David Kanter
New York University, NY·Earth & Environmental Science
Nitrogen is essential for growing food, but excess fertilizer and manure leak large amounts of it into air, water and soil. Once released, nitrogen worsens nearly every environmental problem, including air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer, and climate change.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Social Science
Plant Science & Agriculture
- Topics
nitrogen pollution
nitrogen waste
nitrogen cycle
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2028
What they work on
- Convene three international working groups of scientists and public- and private-sector stakeholders to set research agendas on nitrogen data, governance options, nitrogen–climate interactions and communication.
- Build a collaborative data platform of nitrogen data and indicators that lets countries set baselines and measure progress on national plans to halve nitrogen waste.
- Train current and future nitrogen scientists to communicate and do policy-relevant research through workforce programs, including policy fellowships in global nitrogen governance.
More about the research
Governments are increasingly committing to halve nitrogen losses by 2030, and countries will need national action plans to reach that goal. Writing effective plans requires filling scientific gaps: missing data, weak options for governance (the rules and institutions that put policies into practice), a fragmented understanding of how nitrogen links to climate action, and poor communication between scientists and other groups.
Why it matters
Better nitrogen data, governance options and indicators could help countries write and track national action plans to halve nitrogen waste, reducing pollution of air and water, biodiversity loss, ozone depletion and climate change. Policymakers, farmers and agencies managing fertilizer and manure could benefit from the shared data platform and policy-relevant research.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ariane De Bremond
University of Maryland, MD·Earth & Environmental Science
Coordinate land system science worldwide through the Global Land Programme office by setting research agendas, leading synthesis of place-based case studies, and supporting core methods in modeling, monitoring and case study research.
Travis Reynolds
University of Vermont, VT·Social Science
Compare how the use of scientific outputs varies across federal government components for health, environment, agriculture and social policy in a large low-income country, using surveys of policymakers and analysts.
Angel Hsu
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Earth & Environmental Science
Systematically test generative AI models, such as chatbots, to find out how accurately they report information about private-sector climate commitments.
The school
New York University: 72 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 540 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.