Karen Seto is the Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science at the Yale School of the Environment. Her central research focus is how urbanisation will affect the planet. A geographer by training, she integrates remote sensing, field interviews, and modeling methods to study urbanisation and land change, future urban land expansion, and the environmental consequences of urbanisation at scale.

She has pioneered methods to reconstruct historical land-use and to develop empirical models to explain and forecast the expansion of urban areas. She has extensive fieldwork experience in Asia, especially China and India, where she has conducted research for over 20 and 10 years, respectively.
Her research has generated new knowledge on the links between urbanisation and food systems, the effects of urban expansion on biodiversity and cropland loss, urban energy use and emissions, and urban mitigation of climate change.

Seto has served on numerous national and international scientific bodies. She is co-leading the urban mitigation chapter for the IPCC 6th Assessment Report (due 2022) and co-leads the urban mitigation chapter for the 2014 IPCC 5th Assessment Report. She chaired the US National Academy Workshop with the Chinese Academy of Sciences on Advancing Urban Sustainability in China and the United States. From 2000 to 2008, she was faculty at Stanford, where she held joint appointments in the Woods Institute for the Environment and the School of Earth Sciences.

She has received many awards for her scientific contributions, including the Sustainability Science Award from the Ecological Society of America and the Outstanding Contributions to Remote Sensing Research Award from the American Association of Geographers. She has been named a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher for three consecutive years (2018, 2019, 2020). She is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.