Dara Entekhabi, the Bacardi and Stockholm Water Foundations Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, director of the Parsons Lab and director of the Earth Systems Initiative (ESI), will serve as chair of the new MIT Environmental Research Council announced last week by President Susan Hockfield. The council’s first task will be to develop a proposal early next year for creation of an Institute-wide Environmental Initiative comparable to the MIT Energy Initiative. “The main goal of such an initiative would be to understand how the Earth system works, so that we can approach sustaining life on Earth in a rational way,” Entekhabi said. Professor Sallie Chisholm and Martin Polz of CEE are also on the 13-member council. Read more.