Professor Hester teaches environmental law at the University of Houston Law Center, where he co-directs the Law Center’s Environment, Energy & Natural Resources Law Center and the University of Houston’s Center for Carbon Management in Energy. He is a recognized expert on the innovative application of environmental laws to emerging technologies and unanticipated risks, including climate engineering, deep decarbonization (particularly in energy production), nanoscale materials and microplastics, and climate liability. In Fall 2019, Prof. Hester taught the first U.S. law school course on Climate Intervention Law, which focused on emerging climate engineering technologies and legal challenges. He also originated and teaches an innovative Environmental Practicum that matches students with multiple leading environmental attorneys to work on practical projects and to develop creative legal initiatives.

Dhanasree Jayaram is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geopolitics and International Relations and Co-coordinator of the Centre for Climate Studies at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) in Karnataka, India. Currently, she is based in Berlin as a Research Fellow at Centre Marc Bloch (CMB) and Guest Researcher at Freie Universität Berlin – under the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s International Climate Protection Fellowship 2022-23. She is also a Research Fellow at Earth System Governance, a member of the Climate Security Expert Network and a member of the Planet Politics Institute.

She holds a PhD in Geopolitics and International Relations from MAHE. She received the Next Generation Foresight Practitioners (NGFP) - Security & Technology award in 2022 to work on the geopolitical and security implications of solar geoengineering for the Global South. She pursued a visiting fellowship (Erasmus Mundus – short-term PhD) at Leiden University, the Netherlands during 2014-15; and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, under the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship during 2018-19. Her primary fields of interest include climate politics and diplomacy, environmental security and military, regional environmental policy in Asia, and environmental peacebuilding.

Dr. Deborah McGregor (Anishinabe), Whitefish River First Nation is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Environmental Justice at York University. Her research has focused on Indigenous knowledge and legal systems and their various applications in diverse contexts including water and environmental governance, environmental and climate justice, health and environment and sustainability.

Railla Puno is a Research Associate for the Climate Change Law and Policy Programme of the National University of Singapore Centre for International Law. Railla first developed an interest in international climate law and policy as a law student working for the University of the Philippines Institute for International Legal Studies. Since then, she has attended UNFCCC sessions in various capacities, including as negotiator and legal adviser for the Philippine government, and as Policy Coordinator for Climate Action Network, co-lead of the ENGO constituency. She previously worked for the Climate Change Commission of the Philippines as Legal Services Division Chief where she oversaw the national process for signing and ratifying the Paris Agreement and led the coordination of the Philippine delegation for COP 22 in Marrakesh. Railla has also done extensive research on oceans and climate, climate change and the rule of law, governance of climate geoengineering technologies, REDD+ and agriculture, and human rights and the environment, in collaboration with various intergovernmental organizations, national governments, and civil society groups.

In 2020, Railla obtained her LL.M. degree in Environmental Law, specializing in Global Environmental Law, from Pace University’s Elisabeth Haub School of Law with summa cum laude honors. She also holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of the Philippines and a Bachelor of Science degree, major in Psychology, from the Ateneo de Manila University. She is a member of the Philippine bar since 2015.

Dr. Jesse Reynolds is an expert in international environmental policy. He researches and advises on how rules and institutions can help manage environmental opportunities and challenges, particularly those involving emerging technologies. In this, he draws from international environmental law, international relations, and economics. Dr. Reynolds has extensively investigated the governance of geoengineering (climate engineering), a diverse group of proposed methods to intentionally intervene in earth systems at large scales in order to reduce anthropogenic climate change. His book, The Governance of Solar Geoengineering: Managing Climate Change in the Anthropocene, was published on Cambridge University Press. Dr. Reynolds has also studied the roles of new biotechnologies, such as gene drives, in the conservation of biodiversity and facilitating sustainability more generally. He currently is Executive Secretary of the Global Commission on Governing Risks from Climate Overshoot and Senior Policy Officer at the Paris Peace Forum. He also co-hosts the Challenging Climate podcast. Prior to these roles, Dr. Reynolds was an Emmett / Frankel Fellow in Environmental Law and Policy at the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. He has degrees from Tilburg University, The Netherlands (partially as a Fulbright Fellow, US Department of State); the University of California, Berkeley (as an EPA Science-to-Achieve Results Fellow); and Hampshire College.