NCSU graduate Pachauri named to new Yale institute

Nobel prize winner and N.C. State University graduate Rajendra Pachauri has been appointed to lead the new Climate and Energy Institute at Yale University, the Associated Press reports.

Pachauri won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 as chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

His retains his post at the IPCC, and will lead the Yale institute part time, the AP reports. At Yale, his work will focus on forecasting climate variability and its impacts on water supplies, as well as studying the spread of infectious diseases, searching for alternative fuels and the science and economics of carbon sequestration.

Pachauri spent much of the 1970s as a graduate student and teacher at NCSU, earning a master's degree and a joint Ph.D. in industrial engineering and economics.

After teaching briefly at NCSU, Pachauri returned to his native India and soon assumed his current duties as head of The Energy and Resources Institute, a nonprofit scientific and policy research organization that focuses on global warming and energy issues.

Pachauri took center stage in the debate about climate change in 2002 when he was elected chairman of the IPCC, a group set up by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization. Through scientific investigation, the panel of several thousand researchers and scientists has forged a widening consensus about the link between human activities and global warming.