Disclaimer: this website is composed of symbols and images that do not in themselves carry meaning outside of a total social situation which none of us choose.
Hi, I'm Drew. Welcome to my low-sodium, gluten-free, GMO-free website! I am a postdoctoral associate at the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment and an incoming assistant professor of environmental studies and sciences at Oberlin College; also, you cannot prove I have sympathies for the former state of Burgundy. Be aware that this website is very large, and some of it is randomly generated. For the full experience, reload a bunch of times and navigate as follows:
- If you are interested in my SCIENTIFIC WORK: In my scientific research, I use satellite data to track pollution back to its source and monitor emissions in real time, and I maintain free open-source software that allows others to do the same. If you want to learn more, check out out my ongoing projects, research papers, conference presentations, and environmental datasets. Everything is open access, and you can find a general-audience explanation of each of the publications I led in my newsletter.
- If you are interested in my INTERDISCIPLINARY WORK: My interdisciplinary work imagines how humanity can democratically govern itself in an age of environmental crisis. With collaborators, I imagine the sorts of institutions and protocols that advance economic democracy within planetary boundaries, with an emphasis on connecting science with social movements. This work has taken the form of books, video games, public writing, and academic publications.
- If you are interested in MY CV: you can download it here.
- If you are interested in MISCELLANEOUS: This website is big because I have had it since high school and I don't delete things. If you search for it, you can find ephemera I have made over the years, including original music.
- If you are interested in HUMAN CONTACT: I can be reached at drew [at] drewpendergrass [dot] com or at the academic address in my CV. For upcoming events, check out my events page. You can follow me on Bluesky or LinkedIn. The best way to follow my work is to subscribe to my newsletter below (expect emails every six months or so at most):
Upcoming events
Talk: Socialismo di Metà-Terra book tour (Florence, Italy)
Date: 23 March 2026 at 7pm CET (approximate)
Location: GKN factory
I will discuss the Italian translation of my book at the occupied GKN factory in Florence.
Talk: Socialismo di Metà-Terra book tour (Bologna, Italy)
Date: 24 March 2026 at 5pm CET
Location: University of Bologna
I will discuss the Italian translation of my book at the at the interdepartmental seminar "Ecologie Algoritmi Poteri" in Bologna.
Talk: Socialismo di Metà-Terra book tour (Turin, Italy)
Date: 25 March 2026 at 5pm CET
Location: Campus Luigi Einaudi
I will discuss the Italian translation of my book with Dario Padovan in Turin.
Additional events, future and past, are available on my events page.
Featured science!
Pendergrass, D. C., Jacob, D. J., Nesser, H., Varon, D. J., Sulprizio, M., Miyazaki, K., & Bowman, K. W. (2023). CHEEREIO 1.0: A versatile and user-friendly ensemble-based chemical data assimilation and emissions inversion platform for the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model. Geoscientific Model Development, 16(16), 4793–4810. Link to paper (open access). Link to PDF. Read a general audience explainer.
Figure: Schematic of CHEEREIO runtime routines and job control procedures. CHEEREIO is run as an array of m separate jobs on a computational cluster, one for each ensemble member. These m jobs, operating in parallel, alternate between running GEOS-Chem and running the LETKF algorithm for a subset of grid cells, as shown by the light yellow boxes; the m jobs are coordinated by a single job controller shared by the entire ensemble (shown in light red), ensuring that the ensemble remains synchronized. Boxes in blue show data input into CHEEREIO processes.
You can learn more about my research on the projects page, or you can read through all of our scientific papers and presentations on their respective pages.
A featured interdisciplinary project!
A paper on the town-country divide in architecture and in Marxism
In this article, I worked with historian Troy Vettese and architect Filip Mesko to discuss how eco-socialist planning can create a just and sustainable society. We argue that the problem of land scarcity, long a topic of both classical political economy and architecture, is an opportunity to erode the separation of city and country. We consider the intellectual history of the town-country divide and how the category of wilderness and the practice of rewilding can break this binary. The illustration is by Lukas Eigler-Harding and Ariel Noltimier-Strauss and is entitled Half-Earth Diptych (2021).
Vettese, T.G.W, Pendergrass, D. C., and Mesko, F. (2022). "Town, Country, and Wilderness: Designing the Half-Earth." Architectural Design. 92(1), 112–119. doi:10.1002/ad.2780 | Read it here.
Read more of my writing here.
A random interview
Blueprint from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (radio)
19 February 2021 | Listen here
In this radio interview, my co-author Troy Vettese and I spoke with Blueprint's Jonathan Green about how land use change might help us make sense of recent global fire crises from California to Siberia, Brazil to Australia.
Additional interviews are available on my interviews page.
Play Half-Earth Socialism: A Planetary Crisis Planning Game!
The Half-Earth Socialism planning game allows anyone to try their hand as a global planner of a post-capitalist science fiction society. The player aims to overcome the environmental crisis, global poverty and inequality, and pursue other goals, all while keeping global parliament happy (else the player will find themselves out of a job, or worse). Consider it a sandbox where you can play with a wide range of technologies and policies spanning different fields and ideologies. The game simulates the impact of your decisions by calculating emissions and using a real climate model (HECTOR) to work out the climate effects, while also simulating impacts to the food system and biodiversity, among other natural systems.
The video game is based on my book, Half-Earth Socialism, and was made by a team including Francis Tseng, Son La Pham, Troy Vettese, and myself. For more, you can visit the book homepage or play the game for free in your browser (mobile/desktop both supported)!
