Conference Speaker Bios

Ms. Alvarez serves as the Assistant Director of the City of Dallas Office of Environmental Quality & Sustainability. She has a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering, with a minor in geology from Rice University, and postgraduate work in water resources. She is a Registered Professional Engineer in Texas and 5 other western states, and is a Certified Floodplain Manager, and Master Naturalist in Texas. She is currently focused on implementing the Comprehensive Environmental & Climate Action Plan, the Comprehensive Food & Urban Agriculture Plan, the City Business Climate Alliance and other related efforts.

Isabel Alvarez Murillo is an Environmental Engineer and PMP certified with seven years of experience in designing, managing, and coordinating international development projects in WASH, food security, and water management. She has worked for intergovernmental organizations, NGOs, and the private and academic sectors based in Canada, Ecuador, Italy, and Sweden. She is currently involved in the development of technical notes on WASH response to COVID-19, Climate Resilient WASH, regional governance studies on SDG6, remote support for the implementation of WASH response to COVID-19, support for the design of Integrity Assessment Tool, and integrity indicators for regulators in the monitoring and evaluation of WASH service providers.

Adriana Bankston is a Principal Legislative Analyst at the University of California Office of Federal Governmental Relations in Washington, DC, where she serves as an advocate for the university with Congress, the Administration and federal agencies. Prior to this position, Adriana was a Policy & Advocacy Fellow at the Society for Neuroscience, where she provided staff support for special and on-going projects, including the society’s annual lobby event and the annual meeting. In addition to working at UC, Adriana is the Chief Executive Officer & Managing Publisher of the Journal of Science Policy & Governance, a Fellow with Advancing Research Impact in Society (ARIS), and a Biomedical Workforce & Policy Research Investigator at the STEM Advocacy Institute. Finally, Adriana is a member of the Engaging Scientists and Engineers in Policy (ESEP) Coalition Steering Committee. Adriana earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Cell and Developmental Biology from Emory University. Adriana is on Twitter at @AdrianaBankston.

Sean C. Bath (he/they) is a Scientist / Program Manager of the NOAA Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) Program. They started their career doing participatory planning approaches as a Sea Grant/RISA intern and found their way into NOAA to facilitate that kind of work full-time. Originally from Charleston, SC, they now reside on the ancestral lands of the Nacotchtank & Piscataway people (Silver Spring, MD). Sean is passionate about people-centric science and governance.

Nirupama (Pam) Bhattacharya is a Lead Data Scientist at MITRE, where she leverages her expertise in data analytics, machine learning, and other computational modeling approaches, for a variety of projects spanning areas such as computer vision, epidemiology, and causal analysis in public health applications. Prior to MITRE, Pam was a postdoctoral scholar at UC San Diego, working in computational biology. She earned her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and M.S. and Ph.D. in Bioengineering from UC San Diego, where her research focused on computational neuroscience.

Dr. Yaw Agyeman Boafo is a social ecologist with a PhD in Sustainability Science from the at United Nations University Institute for Advanced Study of Sustainability, Japan, a master's degree in Environmental Science and a degree in Geography and Resource Development all from the University of Ghana. With his interdisciplinary orientation and an interest in combining social and ecological perspectives, Yaw has been working in the fields of climate and ecosystem change assessment, vulnerability and resilience in socio-ecological systems, food security, and disaster risk for sustainable development. From 2009 to 2018 Yaw was a researcher on several transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary projects including Anticipatory Learning on Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience (ALCCAR) (2009-2011), Enhancing Resilience to Climate and Ecosystem Changes in Semi-Arid Africa: An Integrated Approach (CECAR Africa) (2011-2016) and Food Security Impacts of Industrial Crop Expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa (FICESSA’ (2015-2018). Yaw has been actively involved in global biodiversity and ecosystem research network and serving as a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’ (IPBES) Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Deliverable 2c). Throughout his research career, Yaw has focused on using participatory methodologies to work with diverse stakeholders’ including local communities, development practitioners and policymakers to identify, understand,advance and apply, place-based and resilient solutions to sustainable development challenges.

Dr. Maria V. Boccalandro, is a sustainable urban planner with a master's degree in urban transportation and a Ph.D. in political science. She is serving as Dallas College’s Dean of Special Academic Programs. She was formerly the Director of Sustainability and Programs in the Office of Advancement of Cedar Valley campus (CV) of the Dallas College (DC) and also worked for the DC Sustainability Team. She was in charge of planning, developing, coordinating, and administrating the sustainability awareness projects and fundraising initiatives with internal and external stakeholders. She led a multi-stakeholder sustainable economic development planning process, creating opportunities for DC and Yale University students to participate in high impact practices to increase college retention and completion, that won the CV 2017-2018 Innovation of the Year award. She loves volunteering and is now serving on the Environment and Sustainability Committee of the City of Dallas, in charge of implementing the Comprehensive Environmental & Climate Action Plan (CECAP).

Dr. Priscila Carvalho is Research Fellow in Environmental law and Sustainability under the UCL Islands Laboratory. Her previous experience in legal consultancy on regulated sectors and environmental law combined with her interdisciplinary research skills makes her a unique scholar seeking a deep and real-world awareness of justice, equity and fairness which provide the foundation of robust governance systems and alleviation of vulnerability to advance equitable disaster risk reduction and resilience.

Joan A. Casey received her doctoral degree from the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2014. Dr. Casey is an environmental epidemiologist who focuses on environmental health, environmental justice, and sustainability. Her research uses electronic health records and spatial statistics to study the relationship between emerging environmental exposures and population health. She also considers vulnerable populations and the implications of health disparities, particularly in an era of climate change.

Dr. Cook is a Physical Scientist who studies ecosystem form and function in uplands and wetlands using lidar and multi-sensor/temporal remote sensing.  His research interests include forest inventory; forest health monitoring and protection; photosynthesis and plant production; disturbance and plant succession; nutrient cycling; and ecosystem-atmosphere exchange of CO2, CH4, heat and water vapor.  He is Deputy Project Scientist for Landsat 9 (https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/), and Principal Investigator of NASA Goddard’s Lidar, Hyperspectral, and Thermal (G-LiHT) airborne imager (http://gliht.gsfc.nasa.gov/).

Robert Cormia is full-time faculty at Foothill College, where he teaches chemistry, and assists the FHDA College District with analysis of energy use, estimation of greenhouse gases, and modelling of future energy systems. His research interests include modelling real-world energy systems for decarbonization, eliminating natural gas from HVAC, and electrification of transportation. Robert also supports curriculum development and mentoring of students in carbon capture and is a technical advisor to a Direct Air Capture (DAC) start-up in Silicon Valley.

Drew Cutright (she/her) is a Program & Portfolio Manager in Georgia Institute of Technology’s office of Strategic Consulting, with a focus on international initiatives and sustainability. She is also the program administrator for the University Global Coalition, a global network of higher education institutions working to advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Drew held roles as a sustainable building consultant, environmental planner, and environmental educator. Drew has a Master in Environmental Planning and Design and a Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature.

Dr. George L. De Feis is an Assistant Professor of Business Studies in the Stockton University School of Business. His expertise includes strategy, management and sustainability/ESG, and his work appears in well-respected, peer-reviewed journals and book publications. He was elected to the Board of Directors of the Business and Applied Sciences Academy of North America (BAASANA) in 2016, Board of AirSoilWater – sustainability not-for-profit organization in Pennsylvania in 2015, and in 2019 invited as a Board Member of "Science Progress" (Sage Publications). De Feis has over 25 years of worldly professional and academic experience, covering the fields of strategic management, global affairs, and sustainable development, and he has consulted to the for-profit and not-for-profit worlds. Dr. De Feis can be viewed at https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-de-feis-0911046/

Kelley Dennings is a campaigner with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity where she develops and executes projects that address the connections between reproductive health, gender equity, consumption and the climate and extinction crises. Prior to the Center, she worked in waste management and forest conservation. She holds a bachelor’s degree in natural resources from N.C. State and a master’s degree in public health from the University of South Florida.

Jason Ens is Executive Director, Academic Policy, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives at Concordia University. Jason is responsible for conducting strategic visioning and planning exercises at the university, and helping to develop and lead strategic initiatives stemming from these exercises. In recent years, Jason has been heavily involved in the introduction of cluster hiring, the creation of the SHIFT Centre for Social Transformation, the formation of the Future Skills Innovation Network, the development of the Next-Generation Cities Institute, and the institutional commitment to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Jason holds a PhD in English from the University of Washington.

Leila Farhadi received her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering with a focus on Hydrology and Water Resources from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) In 2012. She received her B.Sc and M.Sc degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Iran. Upon receiving her PhD, she worked as a research scientist at the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office of NASA, Goddard before joining the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the George Washington University (GWU) in 2013. She is currently an Associate Professor of Engineering at GWU. Dr. Farhadi’s research is focused on understanding and modeling land surface and land-atmosphere interaction and exchange processes by utilizing innovative remote sensing, optimization and numerical modeling techniques. She is the recipient of the National Science Foundation (NSF) 2019 Early Career Faculty (CAREER) Award and the 2017 New (Early Career) Investigator award in Earth Sciences from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Stephanie Feldstein is the Population and Sustainability Director at the Center for Biological Diversity, where she leads the Center's work to highlight and address threats to endangered species and wild places from human population growth and overconsumption. Previously Stephanie worked for Change.org, where she helped hundreds of people start and win online campaigns to protect wildlife. She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and is the author of The Animal Lover’s Guide to Changing the World.

Director of Sustainability Research Center & Strategic Resource Management, School of Engineering at Universidad del Desarrollo. Head of Waste to Energy Research & Technology - Chile at WTERT Council and Research Associate at Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University and current mentor for the HBA Sustainability Certificate for Centre for Building Sustainable Value at Ivey Business School, Canada. In 2019 was awarded as Doctor Honoris Causa - Doctor of Laws at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay to contribute to the creation of public policies and innovations in the private sector on sustainability issues.

Adelheid Herrmann was born and raised in the Bristol Bay area in southwest Alaska. She is Dena’ina Athabascan and is a shareholder of Bristol Bay Native Corporation. Adelheid has worked various jobs over the years such as in administration, working in the fishing and seafood industry, assisting in workforce development programs, and serving in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1983-1989. She is currently doing post doctoral research on workforce development as it relates to climate adaptation and is a co-investigator for the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy (ACCAP) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Several ACCAP projects she is working on are the Small Grants Program, a NOAA project titled: Assessing Fiscal Pathways for Meeting the Climate Adaptation Needs of Rural Tribes and examining Geotourism as a potential economic driver for rural Alaska communities.

Marcel Howard is a policy analyst & coordinator with the nonprofit Upstream, where he develops and executes projects that address the connections between source reduction, consumption, reuse / refill, environmental justice and the climate crisis. Prior to Upstream, Marcel worked in a variety of positions centered around climate change and environmental justice. Marcel holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Lesley University, and a master's degree in environmental policy and sustainability management from The New School.

Jordan King is a PhD Candidate at Arizona State University in the School of Sustainability and the College of Global Futures. His work focuses on sustainability education in higher education, specifically how to design innovative ways to assess learning outcomes. Beyond this emphasis, Jordan engages in transdisciplinary sustainability endeavors, working with stakeholders such as community members, teachers, and youth. Jordan is also a Graduate Student Fellow of GCSE, supporting the Sustainability Education Community of Practice.

Kirsten Lackstrom is a Research Assistant Professor with the University of South Carolina Department of Geography. She has been a member of the Carolinas Integrated Sciences and Assessments (CISA) team since 2010, where she conducts research to support the integration of climate information into decision making. She works with partners to improve climate communications with diverse audiences, primarily in CISA’ programmatic areas related to water resources and drought.

Dr. Rachel Lamb leads Maryland Department of Environment's natural carbon sequestration science, policy, and regulatory initiatives. In this role, Rachel supports carbon assessments and accounting for Maryland's natural and working lands, and works to advance supportive policy for strategic carbon sequestration activities relative to the state's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act and broader participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Rachel earned her PhD in Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland College Park (UMD) where her research centered on the applications of NASA Carbon Monitoring System science to advance strategic reforestation with co-benefits for biodiversity and human livelihoods. 

Mi holds a Ph.D. in Natural Resource Sciences from McGill University with a focus on the issue of groundwater depletion and the promotion of resilient water-secure systems. Mi was a postdoc for Future Earth leading the development of biodiversity pathways for sustainability in Canada. Mi also served for the United Nations Development Programme relating to ecosystem and biodiversity. Mi Lin is currently a Young Professional working at the intersection of water, climate, and development in Environment, Natural resources, and Blue Economy Global Practice at the World Bank Group (WBG).

Zhong Lu is the Shuler-Foscue professor of geophysics at Department of Earth Sciences, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, USA. His research interests include technique developments of interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) processing and their applications to the study of natural and human-induced geohazards. He is a member of NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) Science Team, Editor-in-Chief of journal GeoHazards and Associate Editor of journal Remote Sensing.

Amber Mace, PhD is the Chief Executive Officer of the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST), a nonpartisan, nonprofit corporation established in 1988 to advise the state of California on matters of science and technology. A strategic thinker and pragmatic problem solver, Mace brings to CCST more than two decades of leadership experience working at the nexus of science and policy, drawing on her extensive background in environmental policy and marine ecology. She has served as an appointee in the Schwarzenegger and Brown administration and as a Knauss Fellow and a CA Sea Grant Fellow.Mace holds a BA in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley, a PhD in Ecology from the University of California, Davis and the Bodega Marine Laboratory, and an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Damon Matthews is the Scientific Co-Director of Sustainability in the Digital Age and a Tier 1 Concordia University Research Chair in Climate Science and Sustainability. Damon is a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada and a Review Editor for the upcoming Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has published more than one hundred research papers on topics ranging from quantifying the remaining carbon budget to assessing equitable approaches to allocate emission allowances to individual countries. His research aims to understand better the many possible interactions between human activities, natural ecosystems, and future climate change.

Dr. May received his PhD in Statistics from South Dakota State University in 2021. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland, working with the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) Science Team. His interests include leveraging remote sensing data with spatial statistics for ecological and environmental modeling.

Alexander More is an associate professor of environmental health at LIU in NYC, associate research professor at the climate change institute (Umaine) and group leader for climate and health at SoHP at Harvard. He is an award-winning scientist, leading the search for solutions to climate change’s impact on global and ecosystem health as a member of the board of directors of the Daniels Family Sustainable Energy Foundation.

Sindhu Nathan (she/her/hers) recently received her PhD in chemical engineering from Stanford University. Her doctoral research focused on studying nanoparticle materials for sustainable fuel and chemical production and her chosen focus is grounded in her passion for advancing an equitable and zero-carbon energy system. At Stanford, she served as the President of the Stanford Science Policy Group and as a Shultz Energy Fellow at the California Energy Commission in the Office of Commissioner Patty Monahan, where she supported efforts to expand electric vehicle charging infrastructure access in California. She is also a 2021 Clean Energy Leadership Institute Fellow and serves on the leadership council of the National Science Policy Network.

Dr Manta Devi Nowbuth is an Associate Professor and Head of the Civil Engineering Department at the Faculty of Engineering, at the University of Mauritius. She is a Civil Engineer by training and graduated with an MSc in Hydrology and Environmental Management from Imperial College, University of London. She completed her PhD in the field of Hydrogeology and undertook a Postdoctorate research study at the USGS, San Diego in the field of Contaminant Transport. She research has focused on the water sector with climate related disaster such as flood and drought being part of the local problems she has been researching upon. She has a good local network with institutions concerned with the problems of flood and drought in the country. She also has an extensive network in Africa, with WaterNet, WARFSA/SANWATCHE – University of Stellenbosh, South Africa, and the Global Water Partnership, Southern Africa. She was involved in the regional SADC project on Monitoring of the Environment for Security in Africa (MESA) and has since included training on flood modelling and remote sensing at undergraduate level.

Gigi Owen is a social scientist at the Climate Assessment for the Southwest program, a NOAA-funded research program housed at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She is trained in geography and political ecology, and my research interests broadly focus on the interplay between humans and their social, political, and ecological environments. Ms Owen's current portfolio includes building equitable and resilient local food systems, assessing the impact of climate adaptation strategies, and evaluating how interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research supports a thriving Southwest region.

Robert Rak received his Bachelor Degree in Biology from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA and his Master’s Degree in Marine Biology from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth (Southeastern Massachusetts University at the time). He worked as a Biological Aide and Research Assistant at NOAA’s Northeast Marine Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, and as a Whale Watch naturalist for the Princess Cruise Lines in Plymouth, MA. He then worked for 11 ½ years as the Laboratory Director at the Fall River Regional Wastewater Treatment Facility followed by a part-time position as a computer instructor at Dominican Academy in Fall River, MA. He began his career at Bristol Community College as a part-time Coordinator of the Environmental Technology Program in 1996 and was hired to the faculty full-time in 1997. He has worked on numerous grants from the National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, Massachusetts Environmental Trust, and the Bristol Community College Foundation. He holds a Massachusetts Grade 7 Wastewater Treatment Plant Operator’s License and a Massachusetts Grade 3 Drinking Water Treatment Plant Operator License.

Jesse Rosenbluth is the Director of Business Development and Green Infrastructure Technical Services at Omni Ecosystems, a vertically integrated green infrastructure supplier, design, and construction firm. In this role Jesse works with designers, end users, community partners, installers, and municipal authorities to get high performing green infrastructure projects built around the country. Through these efforts he’s developed a pipeline of green infrastructure projects in new markets across the country and internationally through partnerships with the public and private sectors with emphasis on delivering triple bottom line services to communities. Previous work has included the management and oversight of project teams as a construction superintendent on green infrastructure projects nationwide, running organic market farm operations and environmental education/riparian restoration on behalf of the Columbia Slough Watershed Council and working as wetlands field research technician.An associate member of the Boston Climate Resiliency Committee and contributor to the ULI Boston/New England report, Living with Heat, which focuses on the consequences of climate change in the Greater Boston area—specifically, extreme heat and its ancillary issues.

Peter works at GeoViable with a main theoretical emphasis on environmental policy implementation and learning in water governance. His expertise includes climate change impacts and adaption with a focus on the water and wastewater sector, and the interaction between the energy and environmental regulatory regimes in relation to renewable electricity production. His primary empirical focus is on hydropower production and change in a Swedish, EU and North American setting.

Santiago Ramirez Said is a botanist and a National Geographic Explorer with an M.Sc. in Natural Resource Management. Santiago has over four years of experience working with Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC) in Canada, Colombia, and Panama. Together with IPLC, they advance Indigenous-centered cultural and ethnobotanical conservation initiatives while co-creating Nature-based Solutions projects tightly based on Indigenous knowledge, social justice, and biodiversity health. Parallel to his work in Latin America, Santiago is also a project Manager for Future Earth and Sustainability in the Digital Age, exploring the current landscape of Nature-based Solutions in Canada, understanding the gaps and opportunities in this space.

Katalina Salas is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Environmental Science and Engineering Department at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her current work focuses on understanding how individuals learn, understand, and make decisions about water resources in the El Paso Region. She often works at the crossroads of science, education, policy, and community engagement, leading to decision-making.

Dr Catalina Spataru is a Professor in Global Energy and Resources, The Head and Scientific Director of Islands Research Laboratory at UCL. Her expertise range from theoretical investigations to implementation research and practice in energy, environment, resource nexus (water-energy-land-food-materials), risk assessment and resilience, people behaviour and response. She published over 100 papers in leading international conferences and journals. One of her papers received the award. She has written or edited 5 books on energy and resources, delivered several talks, interviewed for media. As the Head of Islands Laboratory she coordinates a team of 11 researchers who studies innovative solutions for islands towards a circular economy and assess trade-offs between resource use under different climatic conditions. She participated to the drafting of the EU Legislative framework for Safety and Resilience, contributed to decision makers for energy and resource use through use of scenario analysis and policy studies in Europe, West Africa, Asia, South America. She has been serving as a chair and co-chair of several international conferences and has served as Program Committee for several conferences.

As UT Arlington’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Meghna works collaboratively to foster partnerships among academic, research, and operational departments at UT Arlington, and to address opportunities to promote sustainability in several areas such as energy efficiency, waste management, transportation, education, outreach, community engagement, and interdisciplinary and sustainability-focused curriculum. She has spearheaded launching a Regional Center of Expertise for Education in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in North Texas, a program of the United Nations University, and the North Texas Food Policy Alliance. She serves and represents UTA on several Advisory Boards including the National Academy of Science Board on Higher Education and Workforce Development—Policy and Global Affairs, Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), and on the Board of Directors for International Council for Local Environmental Initiative (ICLEI USA). She was awarded Women of the Decade in Corporate Social Responsibility by the Women Economic Forum, and 2020 Women in Sustainability-Transformational Leader by Wells Fargo/Envision Charlotte. She graduated with an MBA in Sustainable Management, MS in Environmental Science, and MS in Chemistry.

Jacob Taylor is a fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development. He is a core secretariat member of the 17 Rooms initiative, a new approach to catalyzing action for the Sustainable Development Goals. His research focuses on mechanisms for advancing collaboration and collective intelligence for global-scale sustainable development challenges across disciplines, sectors, and geographies. Jacob is a cognitive anthropologist by training with a research background in collective intelligence and social cohesion in human systems and high-performing teams. Within the 17 Rooms initiative, he is responsible for codification of insights and innovations across both the global flagship process and the bottom-up 17 Rooms-X community of practice. Before joining Brookings, he conducted applied research in several contexts, including most recently as a research fellow at the Asian Bureau of Economic Research at the Australian National University, and as a consulting scientist to a DARPA research program for developing technology for team intelligence and performance. Jacob has a regional research focus on China, having spent several years studying, working, and conducting ethnographic research in Beijing with the local Chinese sports community. He himself has a background in professional team sport, representing his native country of Australia in Rugby 7s, 2009-2013. He received a B.A. (Honors) from the University of Sydney and an M.Sc. in cognitive and evolutionary anthropology and D.Phil. (Ph.D.) in anthropology from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.

Sarah Trainor is Associate Professor of Sustainability Science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Co-director of the Alaska RISA, the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, and Director of the Alaska Fire Science Consortium. Her work focuses on building capacity for climate adaptation in Alaska Native communities, including analysis of boundary spanning, knowledge co-production, and Indigenous evaluation. She holds a PhD in Energy and Resources from the University of California Berkeley.

Sandra Venghaus is assistant professor for decision analysis and socio-economic assessment at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. After studying environmental science and public policy at Harvard University from 2000 to 2004, she received her PhD in economics from Leibniz University Hannover, Germany, focusing on complex system innovations. She then worked as a post-doc with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and most recently has founded and led the research group on "Ethics, Sustainability, and the Resource Nexus" at the Institute of Energy and Climate Research – Systems Analysis and Technology Evaluation (IEK-STE) at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. She is Coordinator of the BioSC Competence Platform "Transform2Bio: Integrated Transformation Processes and their Regional Implementations: Structural Change from Fossil Economy to Bioeconomy". Her current research focuses on the quantitative modeling of complex socio-ecological systems, with a special interest in the impacts of political regulation and decision dynamics on social, economic, and ecological parameters.

Dr. Wilson is a behavioral decision scientist studying individual decisions under risk. She is also interested in the development of strategic communication efforts, as well as the design of decision support tools that assist individuals in making more informed choices. Her current research focus is on adaptation to climate-exacerbated hazards, and what motivates and constrains different land use and land management decisions on private and public lands.

Grace Wu is an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara. Before joining UCSB, Grace was a Smith Conservation Fellow at The Nature Conservancy and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. She was also a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the John Muir Institute of the Environment at UC Davis. She was trained in systems thinking and interdisciplinary approaches in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley.

Caroline Zimm is a research scholar jointly associated with the Transformative Institutional and Social Solutions (TISS) Research Group of the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE) Program and the Equity and Justice (EQU) Research Group of the Population and Just Societies (POPJUS) Program. She currently works on the international research initiatives of the Earth Commission of the Global Commons Alliance, and leads the IIASA Strategic Initiative, Just Transitions to Net-zero Carbon Emissions for All (JustTrans4ALL). Her research is concerned with the diffusion of technologies and policies for sustainable development, inequalities across countries, and transformative development pathways for humanity within a stable Earth system.

Dr. Cinzia Zuffada joined NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena in 1992 and is currently the Deputy Chief Scientist, playing a key role in the development of institutional programs and in managing internal R&D investments. In particular, she oversees a number of programs supporting research collaborations between JPL and the academic community. For over twenty years, she has led the pioneering Global Navigation Satellite Systems reflectometry (GNSS-R) technology development at JPL and has played a role in demonstrating the feasibility of the technique for ocean altimetry and land hydrology remote sensing. She is the Principal Investigator of two NASA ROSES awards based on the application of the data from the NASA CYGNSS constellation and is a member of its competed science team. She has been active internationally in the development of the GNSS-R community and is currently a member of the SRB of HydroGNSS, an ESA Scout mission. Dr. Zuffada has a Doctorate of Engineering degree from the University of Pavia, Italy, where she was a Research Faculty in Electromagnetic Fields Theory before moving to the US. She received the Theresian Medal from the University of Pavia in 2002 and is a member of its academic senate. She is the recipient of the 2014 JPL Magellan Award and the 2015 NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal. In 2016 she received the Knighthood of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and the Ghislieri Prize in 2019 in recognition of her career. Dr. Zuffada is active in outreach activities, with particular focus on strengthening collaborations/cooperation between the US and Italy in research and has been a Science Fellow at the US Embassy in Rome in 2019. She serves (as a volunteer) as the president of the Italian Scientists and Scholars in North America Foundation (ISSNAF), a non-profit network of researchers who endeavor to foster transatlantic synergies in research and innovation. 

Dr. Ariela Zycherman is a Social Scientist and Program Manager in NOAA’s Climate Program Office in the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments Program (RISA). She is an Environmental Anthropologist with expertise in food and agricultural systems, household and community livelihoods, and natural resource management. She currently serves as the Co-Chair of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Social Science Coordinating Committee. Prior to NOAA, Ariela supported multidisciplinary and applied team science projects and workforce development initiatives as a National Program Leader at USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture and as the National Coordinator of the USDA Climate Hubs.