Weber, director of Fung Global Fellows program, honored with Frontiers Award

The BBVA Foundation honored Elke Weber, the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and professor of psychology and public affairs, and director of the Fung Global Fellows Program with the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences. The award committee recognized her work on “environmental decision-making and human responses to climate change from an interdisciplinary perspective that draws on psychology, neuroscience, behavioral economics, sociology and environmental science.”

“She has discovered that people’s decision-making about environmental and climate action is much more dependent upon perceived social norms than on stable personal attitudes, an insight that is rapidly transforming our understanding of what motivates positive social action and how to design behavioral interventions and policy to achieve that goal," said the committee. 

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards awards €400,000 in eight categories and recognizes and rewards contributions that build bridges between disciplinary areas. The goal of the awards, established in 2008, is to "celebrate and promote the value of knowledge as a public good without frontiers, the best instrument to take on the great global challenges of our time and expand the worldviews of individuals for the benefit of all humanity."