Alexis Wilson

Alexis Wilson (she/her) is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Earth System Science (ESS) in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and recently received her M.S. from the ESS department. She earned her B.S. in environmental and sustainability sciences from Cornell University where she studied the impact of drought on litter chemistry and decomposition. Her passion lies in understanding and combating environmental racism and climate injustices on local and global scales. Alexis’ current research focuses on identifying and remediating soil contamination in urban gardens, particularly in marginalized communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is assessing urban garden soils for heavy metal contamination -- primarily lead -- conducting interviews with gardeners and providing health risk assessments and remediation options to gardeners and garden program managers. She uses an interdisciplinary, community-based approach to advance our understanding of the intersection of soil biogeochemistry, environmental justice and food security with global issues becoming increasingly important. She's interested in combining environmental science with public service and policy, and exploring the role scientists can play in this process.

In addition to research, Alexis is committed to mentoring underrepresented students and is working to make the STEM field more accessible and inclusive of all people. Through various programs, she serves as a mentor to graduate and undergraduate students. Recently, she was the graduate fellow for the Partnerships for Climate Justice in the Bay Area initiative hosted at the Haas Center for Public Service. She helped develop and lead the new initiative whose goal is to increase student engagement on climate change through local, long-term community partnerships, particularly in disadvantaged communities. She is active on social media through Twitter, Instagram and her personal website to promote science communication and share resources with aspiring graduate students. She is originally from Chicago, IL, and enjoys reading, painting and playing with her dog, Duchess, in her free time.