Dr. Luis Ortiz is an Assistant Professor of Climate Applications at George Mason’s Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Earth Sciences. He earned his PhD in 2018 from the City College of New York studying building-atmosphere interactions under extreme heat. He then joined the Urban Systems Lab at The New School, where he worked on socioeconomic impacts of climate change in cities across the Americas. Before joining George Mason University in 2022, Dr. Ortiz completed an appointment with the Office of the US Secretary of Transportation, where he worked on climate policy, environmental justice, and environmental permitting transparency.
Dr.Ortiz works on urban climate, seeking to quantify the interactions between built environments and the atmosphere, as well as the impacts of those interactions. He has over 10 years of experience in the translation of climate science, most recently as a member of the Fifth New York City Panel on Climate Change and as co-Principal of the Virginia Climate Center.
He has published on the amplification of urban heat during heatwaves, household energy burden, and impacts of extreme heat on passenger rail in the US. He contributed to the 6th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chapter on Cities, Settlements, and Key Infrastructure and advised the Climate Budgeting reports by the NYC Office of Management and Budget.