Recent funding by the United States federal government in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act is a national commitment to environmental justice of a magnitude not made before. Through this investment, the administration is committed to transforming hundreds of Federal programs across the government to ensure that disadvantaged communities receive the benefits of the new and existing Federal Investments in these categories as part of the Justice40 Initiative. But what communities are disadvantaged and in what ways? In this talk, Dr. Lori Ziolkowski, School of the Earth, Ocean & Environment, will share some of the funding programs in these historic bills and open access mapping tools to identify where the investment is needed.

Dr. Lori Ziolkowski is an Associate Professor and the current Undergraduate Director in the School of the Earth, Ocean and the Environment at the University of South Carolina. She researches climate change in the polar regions and environmental issues closer to home. Her efforts have included field expeditions in Antarctica, as well as several Arctic locations. For the past two years, she served as chair of the City of Columbia’s Climate Protection Action Committee, helping shape local policy for a more sustainable future.

Her research has garnered international recognition, as she was recently named the Baillet Latour Fellow (Belgium). UofSC named her a Breakthrough Rising Star and a McCausland Faculty Fellow. Dr. Ziolkowski completed postdoctoral research at McMaster University in Canada, where she was a National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) postdoctoral fellow. She received her Ph.D. in Earth System Science from the University of California Irvine and her M.Sc. in Oceanography from Dalhousie University (Canada). She earned a B.Sc. in Environmental Chemistry from the University of Waterloo (Canada).