Shrader-Frechette
In November 2023 Professor Emerita Dr. Shrader-Frechette will receive the 2023 Cosmos International Prize in Osaka, Japan for her decades of research and pro-bono work on developing methods of quantitative risk assessment and on stopping environmental injustice. Environmental injustice refers to the heavier pollution burdens that, in every nation of the world, are routinely imposed on the world’s most vulnerable people, namely, blue-collar workers, children, future generations, minorities, and poor people.
Shrader-Frechette accomplished much of her environmental-justice research and service work with Notre Dame graduate and undergraduate students, especially with Environmental Sciences majors from the ND Department of Biological Sciences. The Prize consists of an award and 40 million yen which Dr. Shrader-Frechette has said she will donate to environmental-justice charities. Her work was made possible in part because of seed money for her Center for Environmental Justice and Children's Health, given by the then-ND Dean of the Graduate School and because of 28 years of US National Science Foundation research funding. Previous winners of the Cosmos Prize are mostly biologists. They include Oxford University's Richard Dawkins, UCLA's Jared Diamond, Jane Goodall, and Harvard's E.O. Wilson. expo-cosmos.or.jp/english/news/the-winner-of-the-202330th-international-cosmos-prize.html