Dr. Ashish Sharma

Dr. Ashish Sharma is the Climate and Urban Sustainability Lead at the Discovery Partners Institute, University of Illinois System. He is a faculty member of the Department of Climate, Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He holds a joint appointment as a Climate Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. He is the Director of the NSF-UKRI joint-funded Global Center on Clean Energy and Equitable Transportation Solutions (CLEETS). He is named to Crain's Chicago Business' 40 Under 40 class of 2023. 

Dr. Sharma completed his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Arizona State University. Dr. Sharma has expertise in atmospheric sciences, focusing on regional climate and air quality and assessing adaptation and mitigation strategies. Through collaborative research across science, engineering, social sciences, and policy, he studies environmental justice issues, including heat, fog, air quality, and high-impact weather. Dr. Sharma is a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society. He serves on the Trust for Public Land's Natural Solutions Tool advisory committee (2022). He has co-authored an assessment of climate change impacts on the Great Lakes region (2019), a special climate assessment for Illinois (2021), and a NOAA report on aligning research priorities to enhance resilience to extreme heat (2019). As a co-author of the first climate action plan for the Chicago metro region (2021), he has received numerous awards, including the American Planning Association Merit in Sustainability Award (2022) and the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions Climate Leadership Award (2021). The Illinois State Museum exhibits his work on climate change, injustice, and heat in Chicago. He has contributed as a reviewer for the IPCC report and many international scientific journals. Dr. Sharma is a US EPA Science Advisory Board member for the EJ Screen review panel. He is also a member of the Illinois Commission on Environmental Justice and the Illinois State Museum, appointed by the Governor. He is the Associate Editor of the Frontiers in Environmental Science: Atmosphere and Climate journal. He has testified on a subject matter hearing on urban heat island effect and solutions to the City of Chicago Committee on Environmental Protection and Energy (2021). He has briefed the U.S. Senate Climate Taskforce, U.S. House of Representatives, and congressional staff on Capitol Hill on the impacts of climate change in the Great Lakes Region (2019)