Lucy Hutyra

Professor Lucy Hutyra joined the Faculty of Earth & Environment at Boston University in 2009. Her areas of specialization include urban climate and biogeochemistry, remote sensing, and vegetation ecology. Trained as a physical scientist, Professor Hutyra’s research has become ever more focused on the climate and ecology of cities, working at the science-policy interface.  She is a national leader on measuring and modeling urban greenhouse gas fluxes and advancing our understanding of carbon cycling in cities. 

Professor Hutyra has published nearly 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters in edited volumes, including contributing author on the forthcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 Working Group III Mitigation of Climate Change chapter on Urban and Systems and Other Settlements.  She received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a National Academy of Science Kavli Fellow, and currently serves on the NASA Earth Science Federal Advisory Committee.   

Beyond scholarly research, Hutyra has focused extensively on graduate education, training students how to apply basic research to advance the livability of our communities.  Professor Hutyra also serves as the Director of the BU Biogeosciences Program and the Associate Director for the BU URBAN interdisciplinary doctoral program.  She is also the Co-Lead for the BU Campus Climate Lab, bringing sustainability research into practice across the university. During the 2021–2022 academic year, Hutyra served as the interim Faculty Director of the Initiative on Cities. 

Professor Hutyra received his BA in Forest Ecology and Management from the University of Washington and her PhD in Earth & Planetary Sciences from Harvard University. 

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