Nicholas Shapiro is an Assistant Professor at the University of California Los Angeles at the Institute for Society and Genetics, where he directs a lab as Director of Carceral Ecologies. He is a multidisciplinary environmental researcher who studies and designs interventions into issues of chemical contamination and climate change. He has worked tracking the quasi-legal resale of 120,000+ chemically contaminated housing units after Hurricane Katrina, developing air monitoring systems with communities impacted by unconventional natural gas extraction, and testing fossil-fuel-free means of long distance air travel, and is currently focused on the intersection of environmental injustice and mass incarceration. At the MPIWG he is working on the "Environmental Knowledge in Times of Crisis" research theme in Department II.
His research has been featured on National Public Radio, in the Los Angeles Times, and in The New York Times. He has also earned awards for Community-Engaged Scholarship, educational innovation, and STS knowledge and expertise that extend beyond the academic paper and his academic writing.