Elizabeth Losos is a Non-Resident Scholar with Planetary Politics, an Executive in Residence at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability, and adjunct professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment. Her work focuses on how to promote sustainable and resilient infrastructure through policy research on infrastructure standards, environmental and social impacts, and enabling conditions. Dr. Losos also heads the ISLE Initiative, a global network of learning hubs to build sustainable infrastructure capacity through case-based peer learning. She also is the Duke lead for Infrastructure for Good, a research initiative of Economist Impact in partnership with Deloitte and the Nicholas Institute; the centerpiece of the program is a barometer that compares infrastructure ecosystems in countries around the world. She also leads a program on evaluating impacts of debt-for-nature swaps on debt, climate, and biodiversity.
Losos formerly was president and CEO of the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), a global consortium of universities and research institutes with the mission of promoting education, research, and the responsible use of natural resources in the tropics. Prior to her tenure with OTS, Losos was the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Tropical Forest Science, a global network of large-scale forest demography programs.
