Dr. Nicolas Hernandez Aguilera

Biography

J. Nicolas Hernandez-Aguilera is an applied interdisciplinary researcher at Yale School of the Environment. His work focuses on developing analysis tools for community sensing, climate services, and sustainable food systems, with a focus on rural communities in the Global South. He has generated frameworks and models that incorporate local knowledge and smallholders’ perceptions, leading to ground-based policies and instruments for climate risk management. His research has been published in prestigious journals such as Nature Sustainability and Ecological Economics. Hernandez-Aguilera teaches courses on Food Systems and Climate Services, sharing his expertise with students. He has experience as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Columbia Climate School and holds a PhD from Cornell University where he modeled agroecological coffee systems. As a Fulbright Scholar, he received an advanced Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Pittsburgh. His career began as an applied economist, and he is dedicated to bridging the divide between academic research and real-world applications for rural communities. He aims to develop scalable solutions to address interconnected challenges of climate change, agricultural sustainability, and rural development.

Research Interests

Experience