Two Rausser College graduate students named 2025 Switzer Fellows

Congratulations to Energy and Resources Group master’s student Sarah Sarfaty Epstein and Environmental Science, Policy, and Management PhD candidate Cynthia Wilson on being named 2025 awardees of the Switzer Environmental Fellowship.

Established by the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation, the fellowship identifies and nurtures the next generation of leaders who are dedicated to creating positive environmental change across the public and private sectors. Graduate students at universities in California and New England selected for the competitive fellowship receive $17,000 to support their studies, research, and career development. In addition to selecting awardees for their leadership potential, Fellowship recipients demonstrate a commitment to advancing social equity as a core part of their environmental work.

Sarfaty Epstein is a second-year master’s student studying landscape-scale climate resilience decision-making in California’s agriculture sector, particularly at the agriculture-energy-water nexus. Her current research uses geospatial analysis to create decision support tools at the groundwater basin level, and she previously worked as a policy assistant on an agrovoltaics research team at the Berkeley Food Institute.

Wilson (Diné) is a member of the Indigenous Environmental Studies Lab and the lab of ESPM professor Kathryn De Master. A nutritionist by training, Wilson’s research centers on interdisciplinary approaches to Indigenous environmental health, kinship mobility, and Diné foodways. She has co-led a community-based traditional foods program and ancestral lands advocacy at Bears Ears National Monument since 2016.

Visit the Switzer Foundation website to read more about the 2025 Fellows.