Leiwen Jiang

Leiwen Jiang is a senior associate in the Population Council’s Social and Behavioral Science Research unit. Jiang’s research focuses on integrated assessment of population, environment, and climate change. He explores the socio-demographic determinants of energy transition in the developing world, the urbanization processes and its effects on energy consumption, land use, carbon emissions, and wildfire risks. He brings expertise and experience in quantitative research on demographic dynamics and climate change risks, vulnerability, resilience, and mitigation.

A leader in population, environmental, and climate change research communities, Jiang was a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report and has contributed to over 70 scientific journal articles and refereed book chapters. Prior to joining the Council, Jiang served as a project scientist III with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory where he developed the Community Demographic Models (CDM) for the broader environmental and climate change research communities. He has been involved in the Leadership for Ecozoic (L4E) network—a global partnership for mutually enhanced human–earth relations—training new generations of PhD students to better understand population issues.

In his current role at the Population Council, Jiang contributes to advancing and building the evidence on resilience in communities that are vulnerable to environmental stressors. Jiang is also a professor and founding director of the Asian Demographic Research Institute (ADRI) at Shanghai University. Previously, he was an assistant professor at Brown University, an associate professor at Peking University, a guest researcher of International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), and chief demographer at Population Action International. Jiang holds bachelor and Master of Law degrees from Peking University, a PhD in environmental sciences (demography) from the University of Amsterdam, and completed his postdoctoral fellowship with the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.