Paul Barton
Luciana Alves
Luciana Alves is a plant ecologist working on fundamental questions regarding the role of biological and environmental drivers of the ecological dynamics of tropical forests. She is interested in the structure and carbon dynamics of tropical forests, plant population ecology, and the effects of habitat fragmentation on tree species richness and abundance, emphasizing forest regeneration. Her research is conducted primarily in Amazon and Atlantic forest sites in Brazil.
Over the past years, she established diverse collaborations across universities and research institutions, mostly in Brazil and United States. She has worked previously as a senior research scientist at Institute of Botany and Institute of Agricultural Sciences (IAC) in Brazil, as a Research Associate at University of Colorado, as a Consulting Scientist for NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network), and as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow for the NSF PIRE Program in Amazon-Climate Interactions at University of Arizona.
Gregory Simon
Gregory Simon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Denver. At CU Boulder he serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and an Affiliated Faculty member in the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. Before moving to Colorado, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University and a Principal Investigator in Stanford’s Spatial History Project. Among other professional appointments, he is the Environment and Society Section Editor of the journal Geography Compass. He served as the Chair of the Cultural and Political Ecology (CAPE) Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers (AAG). He has also been a Core Advisor to the United Nations Foundation’s Global Alliance of Clean Cookstoves.
As a Geographer, Simon is fundamentally interested in the relationship between humans and the environment. His research and teaching pursuits challenge conventional wisdoms about human interactions with nature and provide insights in support of greater social and ecological vitality and equity. He holds longstanding projects in the American West and India, where he examines strategies of conservation and development amidst profound social and environmental change.
The first primary project explores wildfires in suburban and urbanizing areas of the American West. This research examines the many groups that benefit financially from the spread of cities into areas historically prone to wildfires, and also the scientific and mainstream management discourses that depoliticize the socio-economic root causes of costly and injurious fire hazards. This research led my most recent book titled Flame and Fortune in the American West (2016) published with the University of California Press.
The second project, currently funded by the National Science Foundation, explores the challenges, opportunities and implications of mobilizing household cooking technologies to advance health, development and environmental initiatives, including climate change, forest loss and household air pollution mitigation. Simon’s present research is located in the Indian States of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
Ted Loch-Temzelides
Ted Loch-Temzelides, Ph.D., is a Professor of Economics and a Baker Institute Center for Energy Studies Scholar at Rice University. He has taught and given research seminars at numerous universities and conferences around the world. He has worked and consulted for several institutions, including the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Central Bank of Portugal. His current research interests include the energy transition to a sustainable, low carbon economy, the trends in energy use in transportation in the developing countries, the economic implications of innovation and new energy technologies, self-enforcing international climate agreements, and learning sustainable behavior through networks. He is also studying decision making in economic experiments. His work has received funding from the National Science Foundation and has been published in several journals. He is on the editorial board of the journal Economic Theory, and he is a CESifo fellow.
Anditya Rahardianto
Andi Rahardianto holds Assistant Researcher appointments both the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Department. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and UCLA, respectively. He is a member of the UCLA Water Technology Research Center and the UCLA Water Resources Group. Andi’s research spans multiple disciplines of Chemical Engineering, Environmental Engineering, and Water Resources, focusing on the multidisciplinary area of membrane-based water purification and desalination. Motivated by dwindling traditional water supplies across the United States and in many parts of the world, Andi’s work addresses the development of critical technological tools for cost-effective production of “new” water from non-traditional water resources (seawater and brackish water), as well as for treatment of wastewater for water reuse and environmental protection (e.g., recycling and reuse of municipal wastewater and agricultural drainage water, as well as treatment of nitrate contaminated water). Through both fundamental and applied research, the goal is to arrive at advanced water purification and desalination technologies that are both cost-effective and accessible for widespread use, including in remote and disadvantaged communities. Andi’s research interests include: membrane science and technology, fundamentals of membrane-based separations, crystallization and precipitation, surface fouling and mineral crystallization (i.e., scaling), real-time monitoring of nucleation and growth processes on membrane surfaces, real-time monitoring of mass transfer in membrane systems, process development, design, and control of membrane-based systems, and process integration/intensification.
Current major research topics:
- Mitigation of membrane mineral scaling in water purification and desalination,
- High recovery processes for cost-effective inland brackish water desalination,
- Water treatment platforms and advanced process control for Smart Water Systems,
- Virtual water district for remote and disadvantaged small communities
- Advanced and low cost technologies for water recycling and reuse.
- Development of surface-nanostructured water treatment membranes
TEACHING
Teniope Adewumi-Gunn
Teniope Adewumi-Gunn is currently a doctoral student in the Environmental Health Sciences department at UCLA. Teniope’s research interests include applying industrial hygiene to underserved worker communities, sustainability, and environmental policy. She was previously the Environmental Justice Research and Policy Analyst for Black Women for Wellness, where she used her industrial hygiene skill set to engage community members to influence local, state, and national level policies that regulate the safety of chemical use in cosmetics and personal care products. She is a Women’s Policy Institute Fellow; Student Section National Chair of the American Industrial Hygiene Association; and serves on the Board of Barbering and Cosmetology Health and Safety Committee.
In addition to numerous awards for her health and safety work she was named a 2015 Radiant Women of Action by Radiant Health Magazine. Her work has been featured in HuffPost Live, Cosmopolitan, Essence Online, Atlantic CityLab, Think Progress and more. She completed her Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences at California State University, San Bernardino and her Masters of Science at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).
Qinghai Guo
Qinghai Guo’s research includes urban & rural landscape ecology, and sustainable urban development study. He is an associate professor of urban eco-environment planning and management in the Institute of Urban Environment (IUE), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He now is working in Peter Kareiva’s Lab as a visiting associate researcher at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.
He was a director of Division of R&D Innovation in IUE (2013-2014). In 2002 he graduated from Nanjing University as biological bachelor, and graduated as ecological PhD in 2007 from the Chinese State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His doctoral thesis was about urban non-point source pollution control planning and management studies.
Over the past years, as a project awardee and a backbone of scientific research, he participated in a number of urban eco-environment and sustainable development-related research projects in China. He has published some research articles such as in Environmental Management, Water Resources Management, Ecological Indicators, and Resources, Conservation and Recycling, etc.
Knut H. Sørensen
Knut H. Sørensen is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) and during 2017 Visiting Researcher at Institute for the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. He has an M. Sc. in Applied Physics (1976) and a PhD in Organization Studies (1982). He has previously been employed as research scientist, postdoctoral fellow, founding director of NTNU’s Centre for technology and society, and Professor of Sociology. Sørensen was Visiting scholar at MIT in 1983, Visiting Professor at University of California, San Diego in 1996 and Visiting Scholar at Stanford University throughout 2009.
Currently, a main focus of Sørensen’s research is the study of sustainability transitions with emphasis on energy-related policy-making and public engagement with respect to energy citizenship and energy dialogues. He is part of the national Centre for Sustainable Energy Studies – CenSES. Sørensen is also presently engaged with researching the gender balance among university professors and with a study of enactments of responsibility among biomedical and nano scientists. He has extensive experience from interdisciplinary research collaboration with engineers and architects. Sørensen is author/co-author/editor/co-editor of 10 books, has published 33 papers in refereed journals, and 37 book chapters in academic edited collections.
Jerald Weaver
Jerald Weaver is the Chief of Planning, Science and Resource Management working out of the Thousand Oaks office of Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park Service. Since his freshman year in college he worked for the federal government. His career had taken him from humble beginnings as a volunteer in park, to Law Enforcement, Maintenance, Resource Management, Administration and Interpretation. For the past 16 years, Jerald has been responsible for the management of natural and cultural resources at three National Parks. His primary focus has been restoration of disturbed habitats, wildlife management, and developing a robust outreach/education program focused on developing the next generation of stewards. Along with this, Jerald serves as a member of the La Kretz Center’s Science Advisory Committee. He has a B.A. in Environmental Science and Ecology from Appalachian State University in North Carolina.