Rate My Professor Jennifer Vanos

Jennifer Vanos is an associate professor in the School of Sustainability and the College of Global Futures at Arizona State University, holding the position of senior Global Futures scientist. She earned her PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Guelph in 2012 and her BSc in Environmental Sciences from the same university in 2008. Before joining ASU, Vanos served as an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego, and Texas Tech University from 2013 to 2016, and completed postdoctoral training at Health Canada. At ASU, she directs the Human Biometeorology Lab and leads HeatReady Schools, with additional affiliations including the Urban Climate Research Center, Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research, and the Institute for Social Science Research. Her research centers on human biometeorology, investigating human exposures to extreme heat, solar radiation, and air pollution in urban settings, human heat balance modeling for thermal comfort and heat strain, microclimatic landscape design effects on health outcomes, and thermal safety in children's environments.

Vanos has published highly cited works such as 'Hot weather and heat extremes: health risks' in The Lancet (2021), 'Extreme weather and climate change: population health and health system implications' in the Annual Review of Public Health (2021), and 'Reducing the health effects of hot weather and heat extremes: from personal cooling strategies to green cities' in The Lancet (2021). She has secured major funding including the NSF CAREER Award for coupling climate and human health models (2021-2026), LEAP-HI for heat risk assessment (2022-2026), and Global Centers Track 2: Heat Adaptation (2024-2026). Her honors include the 2024 American Association of Geographers Media Achievement Award for extreme heat research, Impact Scholar from ASU's Knowledge Exchange for Resilience (2022-2024), Academic Fellow (2019), Tromp Scientific Award from the International Society of Biometeorology, and 2019 Climate and Health Champion Award. Vanos's contributions advance urban heat adaptation strategies, public health resilience, and sustainable design for vulnerable populations.