Seth Sheldon, PhD

Advisor, Climate Impact

Dr. Seth Sheldon is a Founder and the Chief Scientific Officer of Rho Impact. He was formerly the Director of Impact Analytics at Rho AI.

Prior to joining Rho AI, he formed Sheldon Data (2016) to provide bespoke sustainability data solutions to a variety of organizations. Before that, he was the Environmental Data Lead at Lux Research, Inc. As part of the Lux Analytics Services group, he supported research and development of the geospatial and resource accounting models that underlay the company’s energy and resource analytics offerings.

In 2012 he completed his doctoral research on modeling Clean Water Act permit compliance by thermoelectric facilities in Massachusetts. He holds a B.S. in Earth and Ocean Sciences from Duke University and a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from the University of Massachusetts Boston.

His expertise includes environmental informatics, life cycle analysis, macroscale energy system dynamics, natural and artificial hydrological systems, geospatial data acquisition and analysis (GIS), geographic visualization, environmental data reporting and regulatory compliance, ecosystem impacts of industrial facilities, and physics-based numerical modeling. His publications present novel methods for understanding, quantifying, and communicating complex environmental data, with a particular emphasis on risks to energy, water, and food systems, as well as the ecological and human health impacts of those systems. His work has been featured in Popular Science, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Fast Company, Greentech Media, E&E News, and Circle of Blue, among others.