Specialization Area: 

Environment and Health

Biography:

Brian Stone Jr., Ph.D., is a Professor in the School of City and Regional Planning at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he teaches in the area of urban environmental planning and design. Stone's program of research is focused on the spatial drivers of urban environmental phenomena, with an emphasis on urban scale climate change, and is supported by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

He is Director of the Urban Climate Lab at Georgia Tech. Stone's work on urbanization and climate change has been featured on CNN and National Public Radio, and in print media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

He is author of Radical Adaptation: Transforming Cities for a Climate Changed World (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and The City and the Coming Climate: Climate Change in the Places We Live (Cambridge University Press), which received a Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award for 2012. Stone holds degrees in environmental management and planning from Duke University and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Teaching Interest:

Professor Stone's teaching interests focus on the role of the built environment in amplifying or moderating environmental impacts such as extreme heat, flooding, and associated health effects. He regularly teaches classes on environmental planning, climate change management, and planning theory.

Research Interest:

Professor Stone's research focuses on the spatial drivers of urban environmental phenomena, with a particular emphasis on urban-scale climate change. He is Director of the Georgia Tech Urban Climate Lab.

List of Recent Scholarly Work:

Gronlund, Carina, Hondula, David, Mallen, Evan, O’Neill, Marie, Rajput, Mayuri, Krayenhoff, Scott, Broadbent, Ashley, Grijalva, Santiago, Larsen, Larissa, Harlan, Sharon, Stone, Brian. 2025. Advancing extreme heat risk assessments to better capture individually-experienced temperatures: A new approach to describe individual and subgroup vulnerabilities. Environmental Health Perspectives, in press.  

Huang, Kangning, Stone, Brian, Guan, Cheng, Liang, Jiayong. 2025. “Declining urban density attenuates rising population-weighted exposure to surface heat extremes.” Nature Scientific Reports, 15: 13860.

Jiang, Timothy, Krayenhoff, Scott, Martilli, Alberto, Nazarian, Negin, Stone, Brian, Voogt, James 2025. “Prioritizing urban heat adaptation infrastructure based on multiple outcomes: Comfort, health and energy.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122: e2411144122.

Stone, Brian. 2024. Radical Adaptation: Transforming Cities for a Climate Changed World. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Dey, Shuv, Mallen, Evan, Stone, Brian, Joshi, Yogendra. 2024. “Using Multiscale Atmospheric Modeling to Explore the Impact of Surface Albedo on Anthropogenic Heat Release.” Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 146: 052901-1-052901-12.

Stone, Brian, Mallen, Evan, Gronlund, Carina, Hondula, David, O’Neil, Marie, Rajput, Mayuri, Grijalva, Santiago, Lanza, Kevin, Harlon, Sharon, Larsen, Larissa, Augenbroe, Godfried, Krayenhoff, Scott, Broadbent, Ashley, Georgescu, Matei. 2023. “How Blackouts During Heat Waves Amplify Climate Risk.” Environmental Science & Technology, 57: 8245-8255.

Infield, Elisabeth, Shi, Linda, García, Ivis., Minner, Jennier, Whittington, Janet, Goh, Kian., Hsu, David., Agyeman, Julian, Boswell, Michael, & Stone, Brian. 2023. “Planning for Climate Leadership.” Journal of the American Planning Association, 43: https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X231199093.

Amaripadath, Deepak, Joshi, Mitali, Hamdy, Mohamed, Peterson, Steffen, Stone, Brian, Attia, Shady. 2023. “Thermal resilience in a renovated nearly zero-energy dwelling during intense heat waves.” Journal of Building Performance Simulation:  https://doi.org/10.1080/19401493.2023.2253460

Dey, Shuv, Mallen, Evan, Stone, Brian, Joshi, Yogendra. 2023. “Evaluation and Validation of PALM Microscale Atmospheric Modeling with Offline WRF-ARW to PALM Forcing Conditions.” Journal of Engineering for Sustainable Buildings and Cities, 4: 11003-11019.

Larsen, Larissa, Gronlund, Carina, Kentenci, Kaan, Harlan, Sharon, Hondula, David, Stone, Brian, Lanza, Kevin, Mallen, Evan, O’Neill, Marie, Wright, Mary. 2022. “Safe at Home? A Comparison of Factors Influencing Indoor Residential Temperatures During Warm Weather Among Three Cities.” Journal of the American Planning Association: doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2022.2087724

Stone, Brian, Mallen, Evan, Rajput, Mayuri, Gronlund, Carina, Broadbent, Ashley, Krayenhoff, Scott, Augenbroe, Godfried, O’Neil, Marie, Georgescu, Matei. 2021. “Compound Climate and Infrastructure Events: How Electrical Grid Failure Alters Heatwave Risk.” Environmental Science & Technology, 55: 6957-6964.

Stone, Brian, Mallen, Evan, Rajput, Mayuri, Broadbent, Ashley, Krayenhoff, Scott, Augenbroe, Godfried, Georgescu, Matei. 2021. “Climate change and infrastructure risk: Indoor heat exposure during a concurrent heat wave and blackout event in Phoenix, Arizona.” Journal of Urban Climate, 36: 100787.

Degrees with Year of Award:

Ph.D. (City and Regional Planning), Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001

M.E.M. (Environmental Management), Duke University, 1996

A.B. (English), Duke University, 1993