Climate Change and Sustainability

July 20 – 25,
2025

Program dates

16,800 RMB / 2950 USD

Tuition

High School
Students

Who can apply

English

Language

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Contact

Sihui Zhou

Program Assistant
Master of Environmental Policy Program
sihui.zhou@dukekunshan.edu.cn
T: (+86)0512-3665-7094

Overview

Climate change and its multiple consequences are among the most important challenges humanity needs to solve in the 21st century. Global warming and the reduction of biodiversity will impact our lives by creating extreme weather conditions, migration within and across countries, lack of access to water, etc. To solve these issues, societies may need to rethink their relationship to the environment and restructure their economies. What is the current state of climate change and how it may impact our lives in the next generations? What can governments, firms and individuals do to reduce climate change and its broad impact? This summer school will discuss these questions and provide a general overview of the latest research and policy initiative in the areas of climate change and sustainability.

Students will participate in an immersive academic experience that will introduce them Duke Kunshan University’s interdisciplinary and innovative education. Students will participate in interactive lectures, discussions, online experiments, debates and other innovative experiential learning activities. They will have the opportunity to develop their research, writing and presentation skills via working on a policy research project guided by DKU professors. They will also participate in fun activities, such as team building, movie night, etc. Students will get a glimpse of the student life at a Sino-American joint venture university, explore our modern campus and build relationships to faculty and fellow students. Students will leave the program with a certificate of completion from Duke Kunshan University.

Learning Outcomes

  • Provide an overview of the current challenges in the area of climate change and sustainability
  • Explain the main areas where policy measures are needed to reduce the impact of climate change
  • Understand how firms and innovation can contribute to climate action
  • Explain how behavioral change at the individual level may support climate action
  • Describe the current forums of international cooperation in the area of climate change and provide recommendations on what is needed for the future.
  • Learn how to develop a policy proposal for climate action.

Program Highlights

  • Interactive lectures with experts in economics, sustainability, public policy and behavioral science
  • Develop your research and presentations skills by working on a group project
  • Guest talks and interactive learning activities
  • Understand and demonstrate the scientific evidence for environmental pollution and climate change
  • Explain the economic intuition for correcting market failures from environmental pollution and derive some analytical models in environmental economics
  • Familiar with environmental policies in China or other countries, and explain how the environmental policies were designed and implemented in practice

Program Owner/Instructor

Jingbo Cui

Associate Professor of Applied Economics
DGS of iMEP and Co-Director of ERC
Duke Kunshan University

Dr. Jingbo Cui is a tenured Associate Professor of Applied Economics at the Division of Social Sciences, Co-Director at the Environmental Research Center, and Director of Graduate Studies for the International Master of Environmental Policy (iMEP) program at Duke Kunshan University, Adjunct Professor and Ph.D. Supervisor at the School of Economics and Management at Wuhan University. Dr. Cui’s research centers on Environmental Economics, the Economics of Innovation, and the Economics of Climate Change. His recent research has delved into intriguing topics such as the drivers and obstacles to low-carbon innovation, the economic and environmental impacts of China’s climate policy and risk. His scholarly contributions have been published in top-tier academic journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Environmental and Resource Economics, Journal of Regional Science, The World Economy, and Energy Economics. He has served as a referee for leading journals in Environmental Economics, Agricultural Economics, and Economics of Innovation (i.e., JEEM, AJAE, JAERE, Nature Climate Change, and Research Policy), as Associate Editor for the Environment and Development Economics, and a member of the editorial council in JAERE. His research projects have been funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (General Program, Junior Program, and Urgent Program) and the Jiangsu Qinglan Project.

Gergely Horvath

Associate Professor of Economics
Division Chair of Social Sciences
Duke Kunshan University

His research focuses on experimental and behavioral economics, social network analysis, labor economics, applied microeconomics, and agent-based modelling. He has done research on diverse topics including the impact of social networks on job finding and labor market outcomes, the competition for social status in networks, discrimination in the labor market, entrepreneurship among ethnic minorities, whistleblowing in organizations, bank runs, and the evolution of cooperation. His has articles have appeared in academic journals including the European Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, Economics Letters, Journal of Theoretical Biology, B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, and PLOS ONE. His research has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Horváth has a B.A. in economics from Corvinus University, Hungary, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Alicante, Spain. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. Before joining Duke Kunshan, he held faculty positions in China, and had research visits at the University of Cambridge, the European University Institute, the National Bank of Hungary, and Massey University.

Xin Jin

Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics
Duke Kunshan University

Dr. Xin Jin received her PhD from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. She works in the areas of development and energy economics. Currently she is particularly interested in the structural transformation experiences of the developing economies, noting that many of them have struggled to expand their manufacturing sectors and to achieve sustained economic growth and poverty reduction. In addition, she has long-term interests in the co-movements of time series data, adopting a state space approach. Her work has appeared in internationally renowned journals, including The Economic Journal, Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Futures Markets, and Energy Economics. Her teaching interests include Economic Principles and Macro-econometrics.

Claudia Nisa

Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science
Duke Kunshan University

Claudia’s scientific agenda is centered around identifying what works to helps us lead healthier and more sustainable lives. Her research program focuses on the effectiveness of behavioral interventions to promote healthy and sustainable living – e.g., how to best promote energy savings, reduce food waste, increase cancer screening or blood donation. She translates behavioral science into practice to tackle these critical challenges, and to respond to calls for better informed policies. In order to do so, she uses a variety of methodological tools including (1) lab studies testing small-scale psychologically-driven interventions; (2) large field experiments testing how to scale-up behavioral interventions in natural settings; and (3) evidence-based policy evaluation, based on meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials and quasi-experiments. Claudia has a BSc degree in Social and Organizational Psychology and a MSc in Economics and Social Policy from the University of Lisbon, Portugal. She also holds a MSc in Decision Sciences and a PhD in Social Policy, both from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She has served a postdoctoral researcher to ETH-Zurich in Singapore, and New York University in Abu Dhabi.

Yanran Yang

Assistant Professor of Sustainability Studies
Duke Kunshan University

Yang’s research applies behavioral decision science to characterizing and communicating scientific results to inform risk-related decisions. More recently, she has been working on risk communication to better inform public health decisions, while her previous research focused on risk communication on advanced energy technologies. Her teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include behavioral science, health communication and decision making. She received her Ph.D. degree from the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, where she also served as a postdoctoral research associate. She received her M.S. in nuclear engineering and B.A. in English literature and journalism from Tsinghua University.

Wen Zhou

Assistant Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology
Duke Kunshan University

Wen Zhou is an assistant professor of Evolutionary Anthropology. She holds a secondary appointment with the department of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke university. Professor Zhou aims to understand what it means to be a human and the moral status a human is believed to deserve. Her current projects focus on dehumanization and its developmental origins. Her work also involves research on social hierarchy, human-animal relations and conservation, deploying an interdisciplinary approach drawn from social and developmental psychology. She teaches Social Psychology, Comparative Analysis of Behavior, and Judgment and Decision Making.

Ding Ma

Assistant Professor of Atmospheric and Environmental Science
Duke Kunshan University

His broad research interests are climate variability, weather extremes, and atmospheric dynamics. The essential motivation for his research is to better understand and predict the behavior of the climate system, which has led to his focus on the variability of the large-scale atmospheric circulation and the related weather extremes. His teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include environmental science and physics. He has had papers published in leading academic journals including Nature Communications, Journal of Climate, and Journal of Atmospheric Sciences. He is a member of American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society. Ma has a B.A. in physics for Peking University and a Ph.D. in climate dynamics from Harvard University. After receiving his Ph.D., he joined Columbia University as an Earth Institute Fellow.

Wumeng He

Assistant Professor of Environmental Economics, iMEP
Duke Kunshan University

He’s research explores the interactions between human behaviors, government policy and the environment in the context of developing countries, with special interests in land use, conservation, natural resource management and rural development. Trained as an economist with a strong interdisciplinary background, he is particularly interested in incorporating economic thinking with non-economic methodology. His teaching interests at Duke Kunshan University include environmental and resource economics, environmental policy analysis and the statistics of program evaluation. He has a B.A. in environmental studies from Brown University, an M.A. in economics from New York University and a Ph.D. in environmental policy from Duke University. Before joining Duke Kunshan, he was assistant professor at Wuhan University.

Pricing

For Chinese Students:

For International Students:

Application Deadlines

For Chinese Students:

For International Students:

Application Requirements

– Current high school students (grades 10-12) with excellent overall qualities and good listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in English.
– Open to all arts and science students and admission is based on merit according to batch.

Application Materials

Applicants must complete the information requested within the link in its entirety which includes:

1. High School Transcript (Required)

The high school transcript must affix an official seal or the academic affairs department seal. Chinese students are recommended to use the transcript template provided by the program team. Transcripts should include end-of-semester grades for each semester since high school (full marks for individual subjects must be indicated). Please also provide overall rankings or rankings by arts/science and indicate the total number of students If there is a grade ranking. You can find the transcript template here:

2. Self-introduction in English (Required)

Please introduce yourself in English with no more than 300 words (e.g. personal background, reasons for choosing the program, academic interests, leadership experience, extracurricular activities…). 

3. Other supplementary Materials (Optional)

  • Certificates of academic competitions, e.g., Five Subject Olympiads, national/provincial/municipal academic competitions, etc.
  • Certificate of Language Proficiency (CLP), e.g., TOEFL, IELTS, etc.
  • Proof of creative and innovative ability, e.g., National/provincial/municipal innovation competitions, invention patents, etc.

Notes: While these materials are not required, it is recommended that you merge them into a PDF file before uploading.

Are You Ready To Start?

Contact

Shane Shi

Program Coordinator
Master of Environmental Policy Program
cheng.shi@dukekunshan.edu.cn
T: (+86) 0512-3665-7661