Guests

Geraldina Wise is a Artist in Residence at the Cullen School of Engineering of the University of Houston and a working contemporary Latinx artist. She is a member of the Latin American Women Artists of Houston and an artist and Board Chair of Advocates of a Latino Museum of Cultural and Visual Arts & Archive Complex. Wise is also the owner of Casa Concept Inc. and Towards Sustainable Design Studio, LLC. She collaborated with UH Cullen College of Engineering professor Jose Luis “Pepe” Contreras-Vidal in The Nahual Project, a longitudinal study of how art and science come together in the field of Neuroaesthetics, in a live painting performance. Wise’s exhibits include the Arrival Awards, Univ. of Houston Immigration Law Clinic, Houston, and Withstand-Latinx Art in Times of Conflict, Holocaust Museum Houston.

Click here to listen to episode 120 on environmental art featuring Dr. Wise’s interview.

Dr. Rabi Mohtar is a Professor of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at Texas A&M University. He has developed the Water-Energy-Food Nexus Framework linking policy and science, and founded Texas A&M’s Water-Energy-Food Nexus Initiative as well as the Water-Energy-Food-Health Nexus Renewable Resources Initiative at the American University of Beirut. At the American University of Beirut, Dr. Mohtar is the Dean of the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers and serves on the Executive Board of the International Water Resources Association. Much of his current and past research focuses on thermodynamic modeling of the soil-water medium and applications for non-traditional water to improve water access across many sectors. His research interests include sustainable water management and global resource security, and he is currently the Governor of the World Water Council.

Click here to listen to episode 119 on the Eagle Ford Shale featuring Dr. Mohtar’s interview.

Dr. Kimberly Terrell is a Research Scientist and the Director of Community Engagement at the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. She is adjunct faculty in the Department of Biology at the University of Memphis and the School of Renewable Natural Resources at Louisiana State University. Dr. Terrell has extensive expertise in public health, statistics, and air monitoring. Her current research focuses on the intersection of science and environmental regulation in underserved and marginalized communities. She contributed to the publication of the first peer-reviewed study that identified toxic air pollution as a contributing factor to Louisiana’s disproportionately high cancer burden. She also provided expert testimony on environmental issues to the U.S. Congress Subcommittee on the Environment and to the Louisiana Legislative Auditor. Dr. Terrell received the Tulane Environmental Stewardship Award as well as being involved in the Society for Conservation Biology and the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship Program, and the Science Advisory Board for the Center for Applied Environmental Science.

Click here to listen to episode 117 on the chloroprene featuring Dr. Terrell’s interview.

Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed is the Executive Director of The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, and the Founder and Academic Director of their Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation. From 2013 to 2016, Dr. Abu Hamed served as the Deputy Chief Scientist and later Acting Chief Scientist for the Israeli Ministry of Science, making him the highest ranking Palestinian in the Israeli government at the time. He is also a Researcher at the Dead Sea and Arava Science Center. Though his background is in chemical engineering, much of Dr. Abu Hamed’s research covers renewable energy, energy security, and climate diplomacy in the Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian region. Dr. Abu Hamed’s accolades include the Best Paper Award for the World Renewable Energy Congress, the Dan David prize for Social Responsibility with Emphasis on the Environment, and the One World Award alongside Deputy Director Eliza Mayo.

Click here to listen to episode 116 on the Leviathan gas field featuring Dr. Hamed’s interview.

Dr. Alexandra Kosiba is an Extension Assistant Professor of Forestry at the University of Vermont. As a forest ecologist and tree physiologist, she specializes in studying tree response to climate and other environmental change. She is the former Project Manager for the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative in Vermont and co-managed the Forest Health Monitoring program. Dr. Kosiba is the current Climate Forester – and the first climate forester in the United States – for the State of Vermont, Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation guiding forest adaptation strategies and promoting education and outreach. Her recent projects include looking into the economic impacts of invasive forest pests and diseases in urban areas, monitoring Massachusetts forest health, and the growth resurgence of red spruce in Vermont. Dr. Kosiba is the state lead on the Vermont Forest Carbon Inventory. She was awarded a grant through the Landscape Scale Restoration grant program in the U. S. Forest Service to study Vermont’s forests and forest supply chain.

Dr. Alyssa Novak is a Research Assistant Professor of Earth & Environment at Boston University and a coastal ecologist focusing on increasing the resilience of coastal systems against human stressors and climate change. She has worked extensively in seagrass ecosystems and conducting health and donor population assessments on eelgrass and seagrasses. Dr. Novak’s work has also extended into salt marsh systems and its relationship to the invasive European green crab. Her research was featured in The Wetland Book, Scientific Reports, and Frontiers in Marine Science. She leads the Eelgrass Restoration, Marsh Erosion, and Green Crab Program in the Great Marsh Partnership and was a keynote speaker at The Salt Marsh Conference 2021. Dr. Novak primarily works in the Great Marsh as well as Cape Cod and the Islands of Massachusetts.

Click here to listen to episode 114 on green crabs featuring Dr. Novak’s interview.

Dr. Dave Yoxtheimer is an Assistant Research Professor of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Pennsylvania State University. He is also an extension associate with Penn State University’s Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research. Prior to his work at Penn State, Dr. Yoxtheimer worked as a consulting hydrogeologist with expertise in water supply development, karst hydrogeology, geophysical surveying, environmental permitting, shale energy geology, and integrated water resource management. Now, much of his research and teaching focuses on the environmental and groundwater impacts of fracking and shale energy development. Dr. Yoxtheimer currently serves as the chairperson and a voting member of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Oil and Gas Technical Advisory Board. He is the founding chairperson of the Keystone Water Resources Center, a non-profit corporation that monitors water quality and educates the central Pennsylvania community about water resources.

Click here to listen to episode 113 on the Marcellus Shale featuring Dr. Yoxtheimer’s interview.

Dr. Sergio Fagherazzi is a Professor of Earth and Environment at Boston University. Dr. Fagherazzi studies the hydrology, geology, and geomorphology of coastal ecosystems such as continental shelves, tidal flats, and salt marshes. Specifically, he has examined how salt marshes have evolved as issues of sea level rise, hurricanes, nutrient enrichment, and sediment starvation have worsened. He has published dozens of peer-reviewed papers, and is a Co-Investigator for the National Science Foundation’s Long-Term Ecological Research Networks at the Virginia Coast Reserve and the Plum Island Ecosystems. Dr. Fagherazzi also serves on the Editorial Boards of Advances in Water Resources and Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. His work has been recognized with the Venetian Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Augusto Ghetti Prize in 2014 and the INTERCOH JJ Mehta Award in 2017.

Click here to listen to episode 112 on salt marshes featuring Dr. Fagherazzi’s interview.

Dr. Karletta Chief is an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She acquired her Ph.D. in Hydrology and Water Resources where she studied soil air permeability and saturated hydraulic conductivity. Her research focuses on watershed hydrology, unsaturated flow in arid environments, and how natural and human disturbances affect soil hydrology through the use of physically based methods. Dr. Chief is also an Extension Specialist and helps the Native American communities with applied science projects to address climate change. She co-authored several publications in the Special Issue of Climatic Change entitled “Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples in the United States: Impacts, Experiences, and Actions” and Forest Conservation in the Anthroprocene. She is also a member of the Rising Voices, and Climate and Traditional Knowledges Workgroup with a focus on climate impacts to tribal waters. Dr. Chief’s most recent awards include the Haury Tribal Resilience Leadership Award in 2021 and the Area/Regional Impact Award from the National Indian Health Board, in 2019.

Click here to listen to episode 111 on drought featuring Dr. Chief’s interview.

Dr. Élyse Caron-Beaudoin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Society at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Some of her research interests include toxicology, molecular biology, and public and environmental health, and she channels these interests into transdisciplinary community-based research projects that examine the impacts of anthropogenic pressures on health. Dr. Caron-Beaudoin has been a co-author on various publications on these subjects in journals like Science of The Total Environment, Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, Journal of Ethnobiology, Environment International, and more. She completed a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health at the Université de Montreal, where she investigated the relationship between density and proximity to hydraulic fracturing wells and birth outcomes in the Northeastern region of British Columbia. In 2020, Dr. Caron-Beaudoin received the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology Young Investigator Award.

Click here to listen to episode 110 on the Montney Formation featuring Dr. Élyse Caron-Beaudoin’s interview.

Dr. Astrid Andersen is an Associate Professor of Culture and Learning at Aalborg University. An anthropologist by training, her research focuses on relationships between humans and their environment in regions such as Greenland, Peru, Honduras, and Denmark. Dr. Andersen co-heads a collaborative project called Muskox Pathways: Resources and Ecologies in Greenland funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research. She also works on an interdisciplinary project examining the technology of digitizing water. In 2020, Dr. Andersen was one of the recipients of the Ziman Award from the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology for her work with Aalborg University’s TANTlab.

Click here to listen to episode 108 on muskoxen featuring Dr. Andersen’s interview.

Dr. Wesley Blundell is an Assistant Professor of Economic Sciences at Washington State University. His primary research interests are environmental economics, industrial organization, and applied microeconomics. Dr. Blundell’s most recent paper, “Natural Gas Flaring, Respiratory Health, and Distributional Effects” was published in the Journal of Public Economics, and found casual links between natural gas flaring and hospitalization rates in North Dakota. He has also been published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management and American Economic Review.

Click here to listen to episode 107 on the Bakken Formation featuring Dr. Blundell’s interview.

Dr. Rebecca Taylor is a Senior Economics Lecturer at University of Sydney. In her work, she is most interested in environmental regulation, food policy, and consumer behavior. Dr. Taylor has published research on the usage of disposable and reusable bags, the implementation of the soda tax, and recycling and composting programs that has been featured in book chapters and publications in journals like Economic Inquiry, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and more. Dr. Taylor has been featured on NPR, National Geographic, and the Data Skeptic Podcast about her research on the plastic bag ban. She has also received multiple Best Paper Prizes and in 2016 received the Emerging Scholars Award for Excellence in Research and Public Policy from UC Center Sacramento.

Click here to listen to episode 106 on grocery bags featuring Dr. Taylor’s interview.

Dr. Raoni Rajão is a Professor in Social Studies of Science at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. His research focuses on the intersections between science, technology, and policy, with a special emphasis on environmental policy evaluation and the study of the role of information and communication technologies in deforestation control policies. Dr. Rajão is a co-author of the book Cotas de reserva ambiental (CRA): potencial e viabilidade econômica do mercado no Brasil (Environmental Reserve Quotas: Potential and Economic Viability of the Market in Brazil) which was published in 2015. He also has had numerous papers published and has given talks on subjects like climate change in the Amazon and the goal of zero illegal deforestation. In the past, his work has led him to collaborate with the United Nations (UNDP and UNEP) and World Bank.

Click here to listen to episode 105 on soy featuring Dr. Rajão’s interview.

Dr. Luisa Palacios is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. She takes a wide and comprehensive approach to her research on energy, finance, and policy, specifically focusing on the energy sectors within Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia. Dr. Palacios was the first-ever chairwoman of Citgo Petroleum Corporation, and finished her two-year period in the Board of Directors in March 2021. She led the company during a critical period in its history as it worked through geopolitical, financial, and operational challenges. To add to this impressive resume, Dr. Palacios is also the co-head of the ESG working group at the Center on Global Energy Policy and part of the Editorial Board of the Americas Quarterly.

Click here to listen to episode 104 on the Orinoco Belt featuring Dr. Palacios’ interview.

Dr. Ajit Subramaniam is a Professor of Biology and Paleo Environment at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. His research focuses on the diversity and productivity of phytoplankton, specifically the blooms of phytoplankton species, the consequences of these blooms, and how these processes might change in the future due to global warming. He uses remote sensing, bio-optics, and Geographical Information Systems to conduct his work and get a stronger understanding of how the marine ecosystem can be managed and maintained. Dr. Subramaniam has been a co-author on various articles published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Journal of Glaciology, Frontiers in Marine Science, and more. In 2010, he received both the National Science Foundation Director’s Award for Collaborative Integration and the Fulbright Senior Specialist Award. Dr. Subramaniam was also awarded a Mercator Fellowship by the University of Rostock and the Baltic Sea Research Institute in 2017. For the years 2021-2023, he was selected as a Climate & Life Fellow.

Click here to listen to episode 103 on phytoplankton featuring Dr. Subramaniam’s interview.

Dr. Danielle Ignace is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Natural Sciences at the University of British Columbia. She is a trained ecophysiologist who studies climate change and landscape disturbances within desert systems and temperate forests, focusing specifically on how these phenomena may impact Indigenous communities. She herself is an enrolled member of the Coeur d’Alene tribe and strives to be a strong voice and advocate for fellow Native Americans within her environmental work. Dr. Ignace was nominated for the Technical Excellence Award from the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), and was also a recipient of the Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty from The Institute for Citizens & Scholars and the Science for Social Equity Fellowship from Fair Count. As part of her work, Dr. Ignace also is the Associate Editor for the journal Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene.

Click here to listen to episode 102 on Eastern Hemlocks featuring Dr. Ignace’s interview.

Dr. Joonghyeok Heo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Texas Permian Basin. He acquired his Ph.D. in Geology and Geophysics from Texas A&M University at College Station, where he conducted research for Water, Energy, and Environmental Studies. His research topics include surface and groundwater contamination, environmental geology, carbon sequestration, and hydrological issues with combining field, laboratory and modeling. He has recently focused on understanding the hydrogeological issues and water-energy nexus in Permian Basin, Texas, by working with interdisciplinary data and GIS. In 2020, Dr. Heo co-authored an article titled “The Impact of hydraulic fracturing on groundwater quality in the Permian Basin, west Texas, USA” which evaluated the groundwater quality in the Permian Basin and contributed to evaluating the impact of hydraulic fracturing on groundwater quality.

Click here to listen to episode 101 on the Permian Basin featuring Dr. Heo’s interview.

Dr. Heather Lynch is the Institute for Advanced Computational Sciences Endowed Chair for Ecology & Evolution at Stony Brook University. Her research interests include developing and applying statistics and mathematics to conservation biology. Currently, Dr. Lynch is working on a breeding bird survey program called the Antarctic Site Inventory where she works with a non-profit research organization to understand the spatiotemporal dynamics of Antarctic penguins and their response to climate change. She was the 2019 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists National Award Winner and was a guest speaker at the Wilson Center.

Click here to listen to episode 100 on Penguins featuring Dr. Lynch’s interview.

Dr. Roman Grüter is a Research Associate at the Geography of Food Research Group at Zurich University of Applied Sciences. He is also the Head Master Research Unit on Agroecology and Food Systems. Dr. Grüter’s expertise lies in issues of agrobiodiversity, agroecology, climate mitigation and adaptation, and sustainability. He has contributed to a book on sustainability in food value chains, and has also had various articles published on his research topics. Most recently, he had a peer-reviewed article published in PLOS, entitled Expected global sustainability of coffee, cashew and avocado due to climate change. In this comprehensive study, Dr. Grüter made significant findings regarding the future of these crops in a warming world.

Click here to listen to episode 99 on avocados featuring Dr. Grüter’s interview.

Dr. Ruy Blanes is an Associate Professor of Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg. His research has primarily focused on regions such as Angola and Mozambique, where he has studied and published on mobility, politics, social movements, and the environment. Some of Dr. Blanes’ current projects include “Gas Gospels and Un/Sustainable Development and Environmental Risk in Mozambique,” “Environmental Disasters and Civic Mobilization in Angola,” and “Assessing the Angola-Namibia border in the age of environmental and sanitary disaster.” Dr. Blanes has also published two books: The Social Life of Spirits in 2013 and A Prophetic Trajectory in 2014.

Click here to listen to episode 98 on the Rovuma Basin featuring Dr. Blanes’ interview.

Dr. Benjamin Jones is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of New Mexico. He specializes in environmental economics and the connections between the natural environment and human health outcomes, particularly the epidemiological dimensions of environmental economics. He has written at length about these phenomena, with his work being published in journals such as the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Environmental and Resource Economics, Land Economics, and Ecological Economics. Dr. Jones also serves on the Editorial Council for the Journal of Environmental Economics & Management. The projects, articles, and research that Dr. Jones has worked on have been discussed and featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Associated Press (AP), CBS News, The Guardian, Fox Business News, Nature Sustainability, and more.

Click here to listen to episode 97 on cryptocurrency featuring Dr. Jones’ interview.

Dr. Karen Oberhauser is a Professor of Entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests in monarch butterfly ecology include reproductive ecology, host-parasite interactions, factors affecting the distribution and abundance of immature monarch stages, habitat management and availability, and risk posed by climate change and pest control practices. She is the Director of the Monarch Joint Venture and a member of state and national organizations that are focused on pollinator conservation.

Click here to listen to episode 96 on Monarch butterflies featuring Dr. Oberhauser’s interview.

Keith Hall is the Nesser Family Chair in Energy Law at Louisiana State University, Campanile Charities Professor of Energy Law, and also the director at both the John P. Laborde Energy Law Center and the Mineral Law Institute. His work and research focuses on oil and gas leases, pooling and unitization, hydraulic fracturing, induced seismicity, and the managing of produced water. Keith has co-authored three books that are frequently used in law schools and referenced by his peers, the most recent of which being International Petroleum Law and Transactions from 2020. Keith often speaks at national and international oil and gas, energy, and environmental law conferences. Before working as a professor, Keith was a member of the Stone Pigman Walther Wittmann firm in New Orleans and practiced law for 16 years, tailoring his focus within his law practice to oil and gas litigation and environmental law.

Click here to listen to episode 95 on The Haynesville Shale featuring Keith Hall’s interview.

Dr. Daniel Scott is a Professor of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo. His research primarily focuses on the human dimensions of climate change and sustainable tourism, as he looks at the two-way interactions of climate change and tourism at the level of the tourist, operator, destination, and land. He is also interested in forecasts and their role in tourism planning and climate change. Dr. Scott is a prolific writer and researcher and has co-written two books on these subjects: Tourism and Water (2015, Channel View Publications) and Climate Change and Tourism: Impacts, Adaptation and Mitigation (2012, Routledge). He has had his studies and observations published in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, International Journal of Biometeorology, Sustainable Development, Tourism Management, and more. In total, he has had over 130 peer-reviewed journal publications, with over 20,000 citations of his publications in Google Scholar. In 2018, Dr. Scott was recognized with the Canadian Association of Geographers award for scholarly distinction.

Click here to listen to episode 94 on skiing featuring Dr. Scott’s interview.

Alissa Kendall is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of California, Davis, where she also chairs the Energy Graduate Group. Dr. Kendall’s research focuses on using Industrial Ecology to better understand the environmental effects of civil infrastructure, energy, and agricultural systems. Other specific research interests include life cycle assessment and the creation of new methods for carbon accounting. She is the lead author or co-author on various published articles in prestigious journals like the Journal of Industrial Ecology that have applied life-cycle modeling to transportation systems, energy systems, and industrial ecology. In 2015, she used this methodology in an enlightening study on the energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from almond production, which was supported by a grant from the Almond Board of California.

Click here to listen to episode 93 on almonds featuring Dr. Kendall’s interview.

Dr. Christina Grozinger is the Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology at Pennsylvania State University. She is also the director of the Center for Pollinator Research and the director of the Insect Biodiversity Center. Dr. Grozinger’s research group examines the mechanisms underlying social behavior and health in honey bees and related species. In looking at social behavior, she seeks to understand cooperation and conflict mechanisms in insect societies. In studying pollinator health, she seeks to understand how resilience against different environmental stressors such as climate change, Varroa mites, and neonicotinoid pesticides can be built. To help beekeepers, growers, land managers and members of the public better assess and mitigate the stressors that their managed and wild bee populations experience, Dr. Grozinger works with the Beescape team to develop models and decision support tools to evaluate landscape conditions and predict bee health at local scales. Dr. Grozinger’s work has been recognized with the Eastern Apiculture Society of North America’s James I. Hambleton Memorial Award in 2013, the Eastern Branch of the Entomological Society of America’s L.O. Howard Distinguished Achievement Award in 2019, and the National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food and Agriculture Science in 2021, among several other accolades.

Click here to listen to episode 91 on Bees featuring Dr. Grozinger’s interview.

Dr. Ermias Kebreab is a Professor and Sesnon Endowed Chair in Sustainable Animal Agriculture at the University of California, Davis. His research interests include whole system approaches to quantifying greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture from animals, manure, and soil; developing energy and nutrient utilization and requirement models in cattle, swine and poultry; and sustainable agriculture as it pertains to animal production and environmental sustainability. He was the first to test seaweed as an additive in cattle feed to reduce methane emissions from cow’s burps and is still working on this project today. Dr. Kebreab is the Associate Dean for Global Engagement in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at UC Davis and is the Director of the World Food Center. He is the Chair of the United Nations FAO Technical Working Group on Feed Additives, a Committee Member for the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Anthropogenic Methane Emissions and the Committee for Nutrient Requirements of Dairy Cattle.

Click here to listen to episode 90 on Milk featuring Dr. Ermias Kebreab’s interview.

Marc Cortez is an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialization at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Marc has worked on startups in clean tech, clean energy, and water conservation for the last two decades. He is the author of Climaturity: A Journey into the Muddy Climate Middle, which seeks to offer a new perspective on critical thinking in the face of climate doom and climate denial, referencing his extensive experience in the renewable energy industry.

Click here to listen to episode 89 on Climate Anxiety featuring Marc Cortez’s interview.

Dr. Sarah Krejci is an Associate Professor of Biology and Integrated Environmental Science at Bethune-Cookman University. Dr. Krejci’s research examines the effects of anthropogenic impacts and natural disturbance, such as hurricanes and algal blooms, on the ecology and behavior of marine zooplankton, syngnathids, and seagrass. She has a particular interest in how seahorses and their relatives respond to environmental changes. Additionally, Dr. Krejci has conducted research into different educational strategies and their effectiveness. She is passionate about teaching marine science students field and laboratory techniques related to conservation, ecology and aquaculture research.

Click here to listen to episode 88 on Seahorses featuring Dr. Krejci’s interview.

Dr. Jennifer Sciubba is an Associate Professor of international Studies at Rhodes College and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center. She is an internationally recognized expert in demographic studies who advises both the public and private sectors on demographics. Her research interests include population aging, national security and foresight, and the environment. Dr. Sciubba is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, sits on the board of the Population Bureau Reference, and she works with Boston University’s Rising Powers Initiative. She has published two books: The Future Faces of War: Population and National Security and 8 Billion and Counting: How Sex, Death, and Migration Shape Our World. She was also the editor of A Research Agenda for Political Demography.

Click here to listen to episode 87 on Population Growth featuring Dr. Sciubba’s interview.

Dr. Neff is an Assistant Research Professor of Soil, Water, and Climate at the University of Minnesota. His research interests include ice core paleoclimatology, glaciology, climate science, West Antarctic climate, and science communication. Dr. Neff uses ice core records to help build an understanding of climate dynamics and atmospheric chemistry through geochemical techniques. Currently, he is working to understand recent climate change in West Antarctica and how this will impact sea level rise as well as building an understanding of the last 200-500 years of hydroclimate variability in southwestern British Columbia by recovering the southernmost annually-resolved ice-core in North America from Mount Waddington. Dr. Neff is also the Director of Field Research and Data for the Center for Oldest Ice Exploration (COLDEX). He also runs the TikTok account @icypete, where he shares glaciology research and answers climate questions with his 160,000+ followers.

Click here to listen to episode 86 on Ice Shelves featuring Dr. Neff’s interview.

Dr. Brandy Phipps is an Assistant Professor of Food, Nutrition, and Health at Central State University. Her research focuses on biomolecules in plant extracts and foods and how these can be used for disease prevention and alleviation as well as nutrition and wellness strategies to mitigate chronic health conditions in underserved and disadvantaged communities. She recently earned a $10M grant from the USDA for a project evaluating how hemp can be used as a sustainable alternative for aquaculture feed. In addition to her research interests, Dr. Phipps also focuses on educational equity, STEM learning opportunities, and mentorship through her involvement in student recruitment and community outreach, leadership, and non-profit volunteerism.

Click here to listen to episode 85 on Cannabis featuring Dr. Phipp’s interview.

Dr. Andréanne Doyon is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Resource and Environmental Management Planning Program at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Doyon’s current research focuses on urban governance and planning for low carbon and climate just cities, sustainable housing, and questions of justice in sustainability transitions. She is particularly interested in understanding processes of change related to sustainability outcomes. Dr. Doyon has published her work in Cities, Sustainability, and Environmental Innovations and Societal Transitions, as well as in edited books. Beyond academic publications, she has also written technical reports, news articles for The Conversation and The Guardian, and participated in numerous public events as a speaker or chair. In Australia, she worked with different levels of government including the Victorian Government Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources, and the Inner Melbourne Climate Adaptation Network with the City of Melbourne. She is also a member of the Nightingale Housing Research Collaboration, a group that undertakes longitudinal research relative to Nightingale projects, processes, and practices and is a conduit for conversation between research and practice.

Click here to listen to episode 84 on Housing featuring Dr. Doyon’s interview.

Dr. Maria Uriarte is a Professor of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia University. She also serves as adjunct faculty in the Dept. of Ecology, University of São Paulo, Brazil. Dr. Uriarte studies the processes that drive forest dynamics in tropical regions, with a focus on forest recovery after natural disturbance events (hurricanes) and human land use and the consequences of these dynamics for ecosystem services. Her research on the effects of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rican forest dynamics highlighted the potential for stronger hurricanes to have adverse effects on forests and accelerate climate change. Dr. Uriarte received the Leopold Leadership Fellowship from the Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University and a Science without Borders Fellowship from the Brazilian government.

Click here to listen to episode 83 on El Yunque National Forest featuring Dr. Uriarte’s interview.

Dr. Mitchell Pavao-Zuckerman is an associate professor of environmental science and technology at the University of Maryland. Dr. Pavao-Zuckerman’s research focuses on urban ecosystems, green infrastructure, social-ecological ecosystems, and ecological resilience. His lab, the Urban and Built Environment Ecology Lab or the Pavao-Zuckerman Lab, seeks to understand the drivers and controls on urban ecosystem function as an indicator of how cities and environments respond to decision making, planning, design, and global change. His recent publications include research into green infrastructure decision-making in a semi-arid city, green infrastructure resilience, and differences in transpiration rates of red maple in urban forests of Maryland.

Click here to listen to episode 82 on Stormwater featuring Dr. Pavao-Zuckerman’s interview.

Dr. Gregory White is the Marry Huggins Gamble Professor of Government at Smith College. Dr. White’s research and publications focus on North African politics, migration and refugee studies, environmental politics and international security. He is currently the co-editor of the Journal of North African Studies. In 2009–10 he received a New Directions Grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, where he studied climate and earth science at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. In fall 2019, he served as a visiting scholar at Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane (AUI), Morocco.

Click here to listen to episode 81 on Climate Migration featuring Dr. White’s interview.

Dr. Jenny Price is a public writer, artist, and Research Fellow at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. As a writer, Dr. Price has tried to challenge how Americans think about environment, economy, public space, guns, and Los Angeles. Her writings include Stop Saving the Planet: An Environmentalist Manifesto (2021); Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America; “Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in L.A.” and other essays; op-eds in the NY Times and LA Times; and her not-quite advice column “Green Me Up JJ.” Dr. Price has created, co-created, and sometimes stumbled into public art projects to work for environmental justice, as well as to de-privatize essential public spaces. She has co-founded the LA Urban Rangers collective, led tours of the concrete LA River, designed the alternative Nature Trail in Laumeier Sculpture Park, co-launched the “What Are You Doing?! (stop saving the planet!)” video series, and co-created the popular Our Malibu Beaches mobile phone app. She has had generous fellowships to support her work—for longer-term support, from angel investors NEH, Huntington Library, Guggenheim Foundation, Rachel Carson Center, Laszlo N. Tauber Foundation, UCLA, and Princeton University. She is now developing “The Homestead Project” and other new works to tell and co-tell stories about justice and environment in St. Louis.

Click here to listen to episode 80 on Rethinking Environmentalism featuring Dr. Price’s interview.

Wake Smith is a Lecturer of climate engineering at Yale University and a Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government Senior Fellow at Harvard. His research interests include stratospheric aerosol injection and how this technology should be governed. He has published papers in this field that focus on aeronautics, costs, and deployment logistics. Smith also recently published his book, Pandora’s Toolbox: The Hopes and Hazards of Climate Intervention, in March 2022. Along with being a Lecturer, he has held positions as Chairman and President of Pemco World Air Services, Chief Operating Officer of Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, and President of the flight training division of Boeing.

Click here to listen to episode 79 on Carbon Capture featuring Wake’s interview.

Dr. Dustin Mulvaney is a Professor of Environmental Studies at San José State University. Dr. Mulvaney’s research focuses on the social and environmental dimensions of food and energy systems, where he research questions about innovation, emerging technologies and environmental change. This research has led Dr. Mulvaney to work on several different commodity chains, with a particular focus on photovoltaic supply chains and socio-ecological impacts across the life cycle. He has collaborated on projects with the Sierra Club, EarthJustice, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, the Center for Biological Diversity, Environmental Defense Fund, Earthworks, the Green Electronics Council, Ocean Conservancy, Grand Canyon Trust, and the Nature Conservancy, and energy companies, and public agencies. Dr. Mulvaney is the author of the book Solar Power, Innovation, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice (University of California Press, 2019) and the textbook Sustainable Energy Transitions: Socio-Ecological Dimensions of Decarbonization (Palgrave-MacMillan/Springer, 2020). He is also a member of the American Association of Geographers and the Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences.

Click here to listen to episode 78 on Solar Power featuring Dr. Mulvaney’s interview.

Dr. David Block is a professor of chemical engineering and viticulture and enology at the University of California Davis. His research interests include elucidating ethanol tolerance mechanisms yeast, wine process optimization and intensification, single vine resolution irrigation, and cultivated meat process optimization. He serves as a Marvin Sands Department Chair, is a Ernest Gallo Endowed Chair in Viticulture and Enology, and has received the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award. Additionally, he is one of the organizers for UC Davis’s Cultivated Meat Consortium which brings together experts, students, and industry partners to work on biotechnology, agriculture, food science and bioprocessing.

Click here to listen to episode 77 on Lab-Grown Meat featuring Dr. Block’s interview.

Dr. Robin Bell is a professor of Marine Geology and Geophysics at Columbia University. Bell’s research interests include ice sheets, tectonics, rivers, and mid-ocean ridges. She has led numerous research projects into what makes ice sheets collapse in Greenland and Antarctica and has even discovered a volcano and several large lakes below ice sheets. Bell has had an Antarctic mountain ridge, Bell Buttress, named after her and led an expedition to explore the last unknown mountain range on Earth, the Gamburtsev Mountains. She has also held the titles of President of the American Geophysical Union, the largest Earth and Space Science community, and chair of the National Academy of Sciences Polar Research Board.

Click here to listen to episode 76 on Ice Sheets featuring Dr. Bell’s interview.

Dr. Amanda Tokash-Peters is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Centenary University. Dr. Tokash-Peters studies mosquito microbiomes, human pathogens, and the environmental factors that influence their interactions. She has broad interests in microbiology, molecular biology, genetics, and ecology, but especially enjoys projects with transdisciplinary elements. Her field work is primarily based in Rwanda, where she is a Research Fellow at the Center of Excellence in Biodiversity and Natural Resource Management at the University of Rwanda. Recently, she and her research students have begun projects investigating aspects of gray seal (Halichoerus grypus) and spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) microbiomes.

Click here to listen to episode 75 on Mosquitoes featuring Dr. Tokash-Peters’ interview.

Dr. Delphine Gibassier is an Associate Professor of Finance at Audencia Business School in France. Dr. Gibassier’s research focuses on accounting for sustainable development and, in particular, topics around carbon, biodiversity, and water. She is particularly interested in sustainability accounting innovations that inform the development of new approaches, practice, methods and tools. Dr. Gibassier works and has worked with the UN Global Compact, the IIRC, WBCSD, R3.0, and CDSB, as well as the French government on carbon accounting and integrated reporting. In practice, she has developed carbon accounting, SDG accounting, and integrated reporting for large companies and SMEs. Dr. Gibassier is also the Director of the “Multi-capital Global Performance” Research Centre, the Academic Director of the MBA Chief Value Officer, the associate editor of Sustainability Accounting Management and Policy Journal, and on the scientific committee of EMAN Europe (Environmental and Sustainability Management Accounting Network). Her research has been recognized with a number of prestigious prizes.

Click here to listen to episode 74 on Carbon Accounting featuring Dr. Gibassier’s interview.

Dr. Janice Ser Huay Lee is an Assistant Professor at the Asian School of the Environment at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Dr. Lee’s primary research interest is in socio-ecological systems. She focuses on issues pertinent to rural land use and land cover change and the impacts of these changes on biodiversity conservation and human livelihoods. Her research also concerns issues related to the oil palm industry, food security, and peatland restoration and management in Southeast Asia. Dr. Lee has published 26 research papers and co-authored seven book chapters and reports including the IUCN Oil Palm Task Force Situation Analysis on Oil Palm and Biodiversity. Dr. Lee is also a Principal Investigator at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, on the editorial board of Biological Conservation, and leads the Coupled Human and Natural Systems Lab.

Click here to listen to episode 73 on Palm Oil featuring Dr. Lee’s interview.

Dr. Elizabeth Chalecki is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Dr. Chalecki’s expertise lies in the areas of climate change and security, international environmental policy, and the intersection of science/technology and international relations. Dr. Chalecki has authored groundbreaking research on geoengineering and just war, and has published over 25 books, articles, and book chapters on diverse topics such as climate change and Arctic security, environmental terrorism, climate change and international law, public perceptions of environmental issues, and water in outer space. She also serves as an environmental security subject matter expert for NATO.

Click here to listen to episode 72 on Solar Geoengineering featuring Dr. Chalecki’s interview.

Dr. V. Faye McNeill is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. Dr. McNeill’s research is focused on the chemistry and physics of atmospheric aerosol particles and ice in the environment, and their roles in atmospheric chemistry, air quality, and climate. She is particularly interested in using modeling to bridge the scales between the large amount of detailed, molecular-level data researchers gather in the laboratory and the coarse-grained information required by large-scale models. Dr. McNeill is also an Associate Editor of ACS Earth and Space Chemistry, and was awarded the Kenneth T. Whitby Award from the American Association for Aerosol Research in 2015 for her outstanding technical contributions to aerosol science and technology, among other accolades.

Click here to listen to episode 71 on Aerosols featuring Dr. McNeill’s interview.

Dr. Ankit Kumar is a Lecturer in Development and Environment at The University of Sheffield in England. Dr. Kumar’s research interests are situated around questions of climate and energy justice. The main contributions of his research have been on social and material infrastructure for maintaining energy access and transitions, how social and cultural practices propagate and are propagated by particular meanings of light and dark, and how these tailor people’s energy use, and how energy access projects can end up reinforcing the benefits of dominant social groups while excluding subaltern groups. Dr. Kumar is an editor of Dilemmas of Energy Transitions in the Global South: Balancing Urgency and Justice (Routledge, 2021).

Click here to listen to episode 70 on Smart Grids featuring Dr. Kumar’s interview.

Dr. Miles Kenney-Lazar is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the National University of Singapore. Dr. Kenney-Lazar is interested in the changing political ecologies of land and property in the Mekong Region. He has long been captivated by the the possibility of resistance by the rural poor to the dispossession of their lands and their capacity to influence governance processes. Specifically, Dr. Kenney-Lazar’s research has examined land contestation related to the expansion of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Burmese agro-industrial plantations and special economic zones in Laos and Myanmar.

Click here to listen to episode 69 on Rubber featuring Dr. Kenney-Lazar’s interview.

Dr. Jodie Rummer is an Associate Professor at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Australia. Over the course of her career, Dr. Rummer has researched fish buoyancy, exercise, and is a leading authority on the evolution of oxygen transport and how performance is maintained during stress. Today, her team continues to combine ecology, evolution, and physiology to address issues important to conservation, such as the effects of climate change and other human-caused problems on coral reef fishes, sharks, and rays and the potential for adaptation. Dr. Rummer has published 62 peer-reviewed journal articles and 6 book chapters and has presented her work at more than 100 professional conferences and public events. Some of her other accolades include an Australian Research Council (ARC) “Super Science Fellowship” in 2011, the highly prestigious 2015 UNESCO-L’Oréal Women in Science Fellowship for Australia and New Zealand, and the Society for Experimental Biology’s President’s Medal in 2016. Dr. Rummer was also named one of Australia’s top 5 scientists under the age of 40 by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in 2016.

Click here to listen to episode 68 on Sharks featuring Dr. Rummer’s interview.

David Johnson is a Lecturer in Law and at the Hasso Plattner School of Design at Stanford University, in conjunction with his full-time practice of law in Silicon Valley from 1996 to date. He also currently serves on the California State Bar Executive Committee on Alternative Dispute Resolution, and its subcommittee on Education and Inclusivity. David began his career in the courtroom, with over 20 civil trials, jury and bench, state and federal. He briefed and argued a dozen state appellate matters, with 6 opinions issued, including one state Supreme Court argument. David then took on various General Counsel roles at AllAdvantage, MG Taylor, Xenogen, Caliper, and a non-profit foundation operating a WASC-accredited STEM graduate university in Silicon Valley. For his JSM in Law, Science & Technology, his research explored object-oriented design and fuzzy set theory as ways to inform a new approach to environmental law and policy. He is currently writing a book on design and climate activism.

Click here to listen to episode 67 on Policy Development featuring Dave’s interview.

Dr. Jeffrey Shaman is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences and Director of the Climate and Health Program at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Shaman is also the Faculty Chair of the Columbia Earth Institute, an Associate Member of Columbia’s Data Science Institute, and a member of the Columbia Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan. Dr. Shaman studies the survival, transmission and ecology of infectious agents, including the effects of meteorological and hydrological conditions on these processes. Work-to-date has primarily focused on mosquito-borne and respiratory pathogens. He uses mathematical and statistical models to describe, understand, and forecast the transmission dynamics of these disease systems, and to investigate the broader effects of climate and weather on human health. In 2014, Dr. Shaman and his team won the ‘CDC Predict the Flu Challenge’.

Click here to listen to episode 66 on Influenza featuring Dr. Shaman’s interview.

Dr. Janina Grabs is an Assistant Professor of Business and Society at the Department of Society, Politics and Sustainability at ESADE Business School in Barcelona. Dr. Grabs’ work focuses on the private governance of sustainability in global value chains and the options of states, firms, NGOs and other actors to improve the environmental and social sustainability of commodity production, with a special focus on tropical agricultural commodities such as coffee and palm oil. She is a research fellow of the Earth System Governance project, book review editor at the Earth System Governance Journal, Outreach Committee officer of the International Studies Association’s Environmental Studies Section, and Steering Committee member of the ECPR Standing Group on Regulatory Governance, as well as founding member of the Standing Group’s Early Career Network. Her work on the effectiveness of private sustainability governance in the coffee sector has been widely recognized, inter alia with ESG’s Oran R. Young Prize, APSA’s Virginia M. Walsh Dissertation Award, and ECPR’s Giandomenico Majone Prize. Dr. Grabs is the author of Selling Sustainability Short? The Private Governance of Labor and the Environment in the Coffee Sector (2020, Cambridge University Press), which won the 2021 ONE Book Award by the Academy of Management.

Click here to listen to episode 65 on Coffee featuring Dr. Grabs’ interview.

Dr. Liana Chua is the Tunku Abdul Rahman Lecturer in Malay World Studies at the Department of Social Anthropology and St Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge. Dr. Chua is a social anthropologist with long-term ethnographic interests in Borneo, ethnic politics, Christianity and conversion, resettlement, development, more-than-human landscapes, visuality, and materiality. Her current research revolves around the social, political, aesthetic, and affective dimensions of the global nexus of orangutan conservation. Dr. Chua is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, where she delivered the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Curl Lecture in 2013 and now serves as a Trustee of the Emslie Horniman Anthropological Scholarship Fund. She is also a member of the Association for Southeast Asian Studies in the UK and the Section on Human-Primate Interactions – IUCN Primate Specialist Group, and on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Asian Christianity, the International Journal of Conservation, and the Journal of Borneo/Kalimantan.

Click here to listen to episode 64 on Orangutans featuring Dr. Chua’s interview.

Dr. Matthew Neidell is a Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Neidell is also an Associate Member of the Columbia Earth Institute and the Development Core Co-chair at Columbia’s Population Research Center. Dr. Neidell specializes in environmental, health, and labor economics, with research primarily focused at the intersections of these. His most recent work applies the latest empirical methods to examine the relationship between the environment and a wide range of measures of well-being, including worker productivity, human capital, and decision making. Previous related work has focused on the effect of the environment on health outcomes and avoidance behavior. Dr. Neidell is also a member of the American Economic Association, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), and a member of the External Environmental Economics Advisory Committee.

Click here to listen to episode 63 of The Sweaty Penguin on Worker Productivity featuring Dr. Neidell’s interview.

Dr. Jacopo Buongiorno is the TEPCO Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Director of Science and Technology of the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory. Dr. Buongiorno teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in thermo-fluids engineering and nuclear reactor engineering. He has published 90 journal articles in the areas of reactor safety and design, two-phase flow and heat transfer, and nanofluid technology. For his research work and his teaching at MIT he won several awards, among which the ANS Outstanding Teacher Award (2019), the MIT MacVicar Faculty Fellowship (2014), the ANS Landis Young Member Engineering Achievement Award (2011), the ASME Heat Transfer Best Paper Award (2008), and the ANS Mark Mills Award (2001) Dr. Buongiorno is also the Director of the Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems (CANES). In 2016–2018 he led the MIT study on the Future of Nuclear Energy in a Carbon-Constrained World. He is also a consultant for the nuclear industry in the area of reactor thermal-hydraulics, a member of the Accrediting Board of the National Academy of Nuclear Training, a member of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB) Space Working Group, a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society (including service on its Special Committee on Fukushima in 2011–2012), a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, past member of the Naval Studies Board (2017–2019), and a participant in the Defense Science Study Group (2014–2015).

Click here to listen to episode 62 on Nuclear Energy featuring Dr. Buongiorno’s interview.

Dr. Sophia Carodenuto is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Victoria. Dr. Carodenuto’s research covers climate change, global supply chains, forest governance, and public policy outcomes in diverse settings, from the tropical rainforests of Cameroon to the coastal rainforests in British Columbia, Canada. Before moving to Victoria in 2018, she worked for over a decade as a sustainability practitioner operationalizing public policy in collaboration with communities, policy makers, business, and development organizations. Much of her current work focuses on sustainability in the cocoa value chain, including her three Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council funded projects “Follow the bean: Tracing zero deforestation cocoa,” “Cocoa’s living income in Ghana: Stakeholder perspectives and sustainability trade-offs,” and “Traders as agents of sustainability governance in global food supply chains: Initiating a research agenda.”

Click here to listen to episode 61 on Chocolate featuring Dr. Carodenuto’s interview.

Dr. Maria Ivanova is an Associate Professor of Global Governance, Director of the Global Governance and Human Security PhD Program, and Director of the Center for Governance and Sustainability at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is also a visiting scholar at the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT. Dr. Ivanova’s work focuses on the performance of international institutions, implementation of international environmental agreements, and sustainability. She works closely with national governments, UN agencies, and convention secretariats in providing an academic perspective with analytical rigor into their international environmental governance work. Her book, The Untold Story of the World’s Leading Environmental Institution: UNEP at Fifty, was published by MIT Press in 2021. Her current work examines national performance on global environmental conventions, and she engages with countries in East Africa to inform policy. Dr. Ivanova has served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the UN Secretary-General, on the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme, on the External Advisory Board of the Environmental Solutions Initiative at MIT, on the Sustainability Advisory Council at Yale University, on the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G2) Advisory Group, and on the Board of the Millennium Institute. She is also an Andrew Carnegie Fellow and the Chair of the Board of the UN University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS). Dr. Ivanova also served as a coordinating lead author of the Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-5), the flagship UN environmental assessment, and is on the editorial board of the Global Environmental Politics journal.

Click here to listen to episode 60 on Rethinking UNEP Reform featuring Dr. Ivanova’s interview.

Dr. Malo Hutson is the Dean and Edward E. Elson Professor at the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture. Dr. Hutson is a world-renowned expert in the areas of community development, climate resilience, environmental justice, and urban health. He has worked nationally and internationally on community-centered projects that improve the economic, environmental, political, and social well-being of urban residents. His most recent book, The Urban Struggle for Economic, Environmental, and Social Justice: Deepening Their Roots (Routledge, 2016), explores the efforts by coalitions of residents, community leaders, unions, and others to resist displacement as a result of neighborhood change and gentrification. Dr. Hutson was invited to participate in the first-ever White House Forum on Environmental Justice, has advised the PEW Charitable Trusts and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Impact Project, and spearheaded a community-driven process for the development of the Oakland Unified School District, among many other projects. He is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including the Salzburg Global Fellowship, two Mellon Fellowships, and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Scholar Fellowship.

Click here to listen to episode 59 on Gentrification featuring Dr. Hutson’s interview.

Dr. Cheryl Murphy is a Professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and the Director of the Center for PFAS Research at Michigan State University. She is also an affiliate for the Center for Integrative Toxicology, Center for Water Sciences, the Environmental Science and Public Policy program, and the Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Behavior Program. Her current research focuses on how information collected on an individual translates across higher levels of biological organization. Using fish as a model organism, she explores how changes in gene expression and the physiological processes occurring within an individual translate to behavioral changes and ecologically relevant endpoints such as reproduction and growth, how short term phenotypic changes in expressed traits alter long term genetic change and affect life history traits, and how anthropogenic influences such as contaminants and other stressors impact such relationships and affect populations or communities of fish. Dr. Murphy is a global research leader in per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a class of more than 4,000 chemicals used in everyday items such as carpeting, textiles, footwear and paper food packaging. Through her work with the Center for PFAS Research, Dr. Murphy’s projects quantify exposure to livestock, field crops, fish and wildlife, develop and test remediation strategies and technologies, and explore safe alternatives to PFAS.

Click here to listen to episode 58 on PFAS featuring Dr. Murphy’s interview.

Dr. Michelle Moyer is an Associate Professor of Viticulture and Enology at Washington State University. Dr. Moyer works closely with other members of the Viticulture and Enology program to help transfer knowledge gained through WSU research (and beyond) to the hands of the Washington viticulture industry. This includes the development of workshops and educational programs, publishing the WSU Viticulture and Enology Extension News, and teaching three courses in the WSU-Extension Viticulture and Enology Certificate Program. Dr. Moyer’s research covers the applied science behind (i) vineyard site selection and establishment, (ii) grapevine canopy manipulation and management, and (iii) general viticulture practices on wine and juice grape production. These include validating existing and developing new site selection models and criteria for defining grape quality and ideal growing conditions, understanding how canopy manipulation and management strategies influence grapevine growth and development, and optimizing the timing and type of viticulture cultural techniques for combined impacts on disease management and grape quality. Dr. Moyer won the 2020 Extension Distinction Award from the American Society for Enology & Viticulture.

Click here to listen to episode 57 on Wine featuring Dr. Moyer’s interview.

Dr. Michela Biasutti is a Lamont Associate Research Professor of Ocean and Climate Physics in the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. Dr. Biasutti studies the factors that control the location and intensity of rainfall in the tropics. She is a leading expert on the link between climate change and monsoons, and has organized meetings, written book chapters, and published an extensive body of peer-reviewed papers on this relationship.

Click here to listen to episode 56 on Monsoons featuring Dr. Biasutti’s interview.

Dr. Alana Grech is an Associate Professor at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia and the Assistant Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. At the Centre, Dr. Grech is also Program Leader of Research Program 2: Ecosystem Dynamics: Past, Present and Future. Dr. Grech’s research uses conservation biogeography theory and spatial technologies to inform the conservation of Australia’s coastal environment. Specifically, she develops new methodologies for cumulative impact assessment (CIA), and explores the implications of CIA in environmental decision-making, policy and practice. Most of her research is conducted in remote coastal and marine areas of northern Australia, including the Great Barrier Reef, Torres Strait, and Gulf of Carpentaria. Dr. Grech is an Associate Editor of Diversity and Distributions and Associate Dean Research Education at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies’ JCU node.

Click here to listen to episode 55 on Dugongs featuring Dr. Grech’s interview.

Dr. Harriet Bulkeley is a Professor of Geography at Durham University in Durham, England. Her research largely explores climate change and the roles of cities and other non-state actors in responding to this global challenge. Dr. Bulkeley has led the Naturvation project: a 4-year project funded by the European Commission and involving a team of 80 researchers from 14 institutions in six European countries seeking to understand the role that nature-based solutions can play in responding to urban sustainability challenges. Dr. Bulkeley is also involved in the ReInvent-EU project, which aims to encourage decarbonisation in 4 key areas: plastic, steel, paper and meat and dairy. Dr. Bulkeley has published over 50 books and articles, including An Urban Politics of Climate Change: Experimentation and the Governing of Socio-Technical Transitions (Routledge, 2015) and Low Carbon Communities and Social Justice (2012). She is also an editor of the journal Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy. In 2018, Dr. Bulkeley won the Royal Geographical Society’s Back Award in recognition of the policy impact of her work on climate change.

Click here to listen to episode 54 on Urban Greenspace featuring Dr. Bulkeley’s interview.

Dr. Jared Margulies is an Assistant Professor of Political Ecology at the University of Alabama. While a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the BIOSEC project in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield, Dr. Margulies began studying illegal wildlife trade, with an emphasis on illegal trade in cactus and succulent plants, as well as the geopolitical and racialized contours of illegal wildlife trade interventions. This ultimately led to several years of multi-sited, multi-species fieldwork on the largely unexplored global wildlife trade in succulents, which he is currently developing into a book.

Dr. Suzana Camargo is the Marie Tharp Lamont Research Professor of Ocean and Climate Physics in the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. Prior to joining Lamont-Doherty, Dr. Camargo was a scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia, an Associate Professor at São Paulo State University in Brazil, and a postdoctoral researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany. Dr. Camargo is one of the world’s leading experts on tropical cyclones and their relationship to the climate. Over the last 20 years, she has made important contributions to our understanding of how tropical cyclones are affected by natural climate variations, like El Niño; the influence of human-induced climate change on tropical cyclones, including the evaluation of simulations of tropical cyclones in climate models, and to the practice of seasonal climate forecasting of tropical cyclone activity. Dr. Camargo has served as the Co-Chair of the U.S. CLIVAR Hurricane Working Group, a member of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Task Forces on Model Diagnostics, Subseasonal to Seasonal variability, and model processes in CMIP5. She is currently a member of the World Meteorological Organization’s Expert Team on Climate Change Impacts from tropical cyclones, and the Secretary of the American Geophysical Union’s Hazards Section. She is also an Editor for Geophysical Research Letters, and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Climate. In 2020, Dr. Camargo was awarded the WMO Committee on Climate Variability and Change’s Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award.

Click here to listen to episode 52 on Tropical Cyclones featuring Dr. Camargo’s interview.

Dr. Kyla Tienhaara is Canada Research Chair in Economy and Environment and Assistant Professor in the School of Environmental Studies and Department of Global Development Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Prior to joining the faculty at Queen’s, she held several positions at the Australian National University, including most recently an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) funded research fellowship. Her main area of interest is the intersection between environmental governance and the global economic system. One area of her work has examined investor-state disputes concerning environmental regulation that are brought to international arbitration under bilateral and regional investment agreements. She is the author of The Expropriation of Environmental Governance: Protecting Foreign Investors at the Expense of Public Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Click here to listen to episode 51 on Investor-State Dispute Settlements featuring Dr. Tienhaara’s interview.

Dr. Mark Hamann is an Associate Professor of Marine Biology at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. Most of his research interests are associated with understanding biology and improving management prospects of marine wildlife such as marine turtles and dugong. Dr. Hamann has published dozens of papers on the impacts of climate change and plastic pollution on marine wildlife. His recent work has also studied sea turtle behavior.

Click here to listen to episode 50 on Sea Turtles featuring Dr. Hamann’s interview.

Dr. Zdravka Tzankova is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Vanderbilt University. Her research interests include US and comparative environmental policy and governance, corporate sustainability & supply chain greening, disruptive approaches to correcting for regulatory failures and overcoming blocked political opportunities, and interactions between private environmental governance and public environmental policy and regulation. Her earlier work focused largely on fisheries policy and sustainable fisheries. Now, Dr. Tzankova writes largely about corporate renewable energy and antibiotics in agriculture.

Click here to listen to episode 49 on Chicken featuring Dr. Tzankova’s interview.

Dr. Cédric Fichot is an Assistant Professor of Earth & Environment at Boston University. Dr. Fichot’s research focuses on estuarine and coastal biogeochemistry and water quality, and combines elements of marine optics, remote sensing, organic geochemistry and photochemistry to promote a better quantitative understanding of various types of interactions between terrestrial and marine environments and their perturbations by climate change and human activities. Dr. Fichot leads BU’s Aquatic Photo-biogeochemistry & Remote Sensing Lab, which conducts experiments and develops new techniques in order to model, quantify and understand processes regulating carbon biogeochemistry, water quality and sediment dynamics across the land-ocean continuum and assess their vulnerability to climate variability and human-driven changes.

Click here to listen to episode 48 on Ultraviolet Radiation featuring Dr. Fichot’s interview.

Dr. Lina Mtwana Nordlund is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences, Natural Resources, and Sustainable Development at Uppsala University in Sweden. Dr. Nordlund is interested in the coastal environment. Her research uses a multi- and transdisciplinary approach to provide a more holistic view of the environmental challenges coastal seas are facing. Of special interest are strong sustainable development and social-ecological systems, with focus on seagrass, fisheries, ecosystem services and management. Dr. Nordlund is also the Founder and Director of the Indo-Pacific Seagrass Network—a research network that aims to build capacity and perform standardized, coupled social-ecological surveys of seagrass and associated fisheries across the Indo-Pacific.

Click here to listen to episode 47 on Seagrass featuring Dr. Nordlund’s interview.

Dr. Teresa Kramarz is an Associate Professor in the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. She directs Munk One, a first year undergraduate program on Global Innovation, and co-directs the Environmental Governance Lab. She is also a Senior Research Fellow of the Earth System Governance research alliance, and Co-Director of the Accountability in Global Environmental Task Force. Her research focuses on global environmental governance, international organizations and public-private partnerships, specifically as it pertains to accountability in global environmental governance, World Bank partnerships, and extractives and development. Her latest books are Forgotten Values: The World Bank and Environmental Partnerships (MIT Press, 2020) and Global Environmental Governance and the Accountability Trap (MIT Press, 2019).

Click here to listen to episode 46 on The World Bank featuring Dr. Kramarz’ interview.

Dr. Yixian Sun is an Assistant Professor of International Development at the University of Bath. Dr. Sun’s research focuses on transnational governance, environmental politics, and sustainable consumption and production in the Global South. He seeks to explain whether and how different types of governance initiatives can help large emerging economies, China in particular, achieve sustainability transitions. Dr. Sun is also interested in the sustainability impact of China-funded development projects around the world. His work has been published in Ecological Economics, Global Environmental Politics, Global Food Security and Review of International Political Economy. His book studying China’s engagement in transnational sustainability certification will be published by the MIT Press (Earth System Governance Series). Dr. Sun is also a writer for the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, having attended various meetings of multilateral environmental treaties.

Click here to listen to episode 45 on Tea featuring Dr. Sun’s interview.

Dr. Kylie Pitt is a Professor in the School of Environment and Science and the Discipline Head of Marine Science at Griffith University in Australia. Her research focuses on understanding the population dynamics of jellyfish (from local to global scales), their responses to changing ocean conditions, and their interactions with people and coastal industries. She leads the Griffith Sea Jellies Research Laboratory, a state-of-the-art research facility specialized for studying jellyfish, which is located within Sea World’s Sea Jellies Illuminated exhibit and on display to the public. Kylie engages with industry by leading Griffith’s strategic partnership with Sea World and her membership of the Gold Coast Waterways Authority’s Science and Innovation Advisory Committee and The Moreton Bay Foundation’s Research Advisory Committee.

Click here to listen to episode 44 on Jellyfish featuring Dr. Pitt’s interview.

Dr. Cristina Balboa is an Associate Professor in the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College, and the Director of Baruch’s Center for Nonprofit Strategy and Management. Her research incorporates international relations, comparative policy and organization theory to demonstrate how internal organizational traits (i.e. capacity, structure, ethos, diversity and leadership) contribute to or detract from the balanced accountability of the political institutions of private environmental governance – from nonprofits to networks, certification mechanisms, and global governance organizations. Her work has been recognized through fellowships at Harvard University’s Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science to Achieve Results (EPA-STAR) program, the Switzer Foundation and the Environmental Leadership Program. Prior to her academic work, Dr. Balboa spent almost a decade working in nonprofits in Washington D.C. and Ecuador on environmental issues in Latin America, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Dr. Balboa is also the author of The Paradox of Scale: How NGOs Build, Maintain, and Lose Authority in Environmental Governance (MIT Press, 2018).

Click here to listen to episode 43 on NGOs featuring Dr. Balboa’s interview.

Dr. Lemir Teron is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Dr. Teron’s thinking and research deliberates on problems related to inequality, conflict and empowerment. The implications are often times though not exclusively environmental, covering topics such as energy justice, urban studies, environmental justice, coastal communities, environmental law, and political ecology. Dr. Teron is also on the Central New York Regional Economic Development Council’s Environmental Justice task force and an advisor to the New York Civil Liberties Union’s I-81 campaign. In 2019, Dr. Teron won the Distinguished Faculty Member for Teaching Excellence Award from ESF’s Undergraduate Student Association.

Click here to listen to episode 42 on Brownfields and Superfund Sites featuring Dr. Teron’s interview.

Dr. Kate Neville is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, in the Department of Political Science and the School of the Environment. Her research interests are in global environmental politics, with a focus on resource governance, global commodity markets, and contested water and energy projects. Dr. Neville is the author of Fueling Resistance: The Contentious Political Economy of Biofuels and Fracking (Oxford University Press, 2021).

Click here to listen to episode 41 on Fracking featuring Dr. Neville’s interview.

Dr. Stacy VanDeveer is a Professor of Global Governance and Human Security and the Chair of the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. His research interests include EU environmental and energy politics, global environmental policymaking and institutions, comparative environmental politics, connections between environmental and security issues, the roles of expertise in policymaking, and the global politics of resources and consumption. Dr. VanDeveer co-edited the journal Global Environmental Politics (MIT Press) from 2013-17, and has authored or edited ten books and almost 100 articles, book chapters, working papers and reports.

Click here to listen to episode 40 on Rethinking Natural Resources featuring Dr. VanDeveer’s interview.

Dr. Adriane Esquivel-Muelbert is a Lecturer of Global Forest Ecology at the University of Birmingham. Dr. Esquivel-Muelbert has focused her work on Neotropical forests combining biogeography with forest dynamics to study the impacts of global change on tree communities and tree turnover. Being originally from Brazil, Dr. Esquivel-Muelbert has focused a large portion of her research on the Amazon Rainforest and the ways climate change impacts it, which has resulted in numerous published papers.

Click here to listen to episode 39 on the Amazon Rainforest featuring Dr. Esquivel-Muelbert’s interview.

Dr. Jessica Templeton is an Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Social Science at the London School of Economics, and the Director of LSE100 – LSE’s flagship interdisciplinary course taken by all first- and second-year undergraduates. With expertise in global environmental politics and regulation of hazardous chemicals, Dr. Templeton is also a writer, editor and team leader for the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, a nonpartisan publication of the International Institute for Sustainable Development that analyses multilateral environmental negotiations conducted under the auspices of the United Nations. She is particularly interested in global regulation of hazardous substances, and has worked extensively with the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and the Minamata Convention on Mercury.

Click here to listen to episode 38 on DDT featuring Dr. Templeton’s interview.

Dr. Natalie Hunt is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Hunt’s research uses an interdisciplinary approach to exploring sustainability of conventional and alternative cropping systems. She is interested in modeling the life cycle impacts of diversified, integrated, and cover cropping systems on air, soil, and water quality, as well as the fossil energy efficiency, human health damages, and climate change impacts of these systems. Dr. Hunt has co-authored several papers on environmental and health impacts of maize agriculture and how diversified cropping systems can yield improved environmental and economic outcomes.

Click here to listen to episode 37 on Corn featuring Dr. Hunt’s interview.

Dr. Michael Kingsford is a Distinguished Professor of Marine Biology at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. Dr. Kingsford was recently the Dean of the JCU College of Science and Engineering, and has served as the President of the Australian Coral Reef Society, the Director of One Tree Island Research Station, a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Innovative Coral Reef Studies, and a member of the Great Barrier Reef Research Foundation and the Museum of Tropical Queensland advisory committees. He has published one hundred and ninety six publications including three major books: Studying Temperate Marine Environment: A Handbook for Ecologists, and the first and second editions of Great Barrier Reef: Biology, Environment and Management. A major focus of his research has been on connectivity of reef fish populations, environmental records in corals and fishes and deadly irukandji jellyfishes.

Click here to listen to episode 36 on The Great Barrier Reef featuring Dr. Kingsford’s interview.

Kottie Christie-Blick is an instructor at the University of San Diego, and a Climate Education Consultant. She works with educators – elementary through high school – helping them design climate change and sustainability lessons that fit with their required curriculum. She is also an award-winning classroom teacher, member of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Planet Stewards Program, and webmaster of the popular website, KidsAgainstClimateChange.com.

Click here to listen to episode 35 on Elementary Education featuring Kottie’s interview.

Dr. Margaret Awuor Owuor is a Lecturer in the School of Environment, Water and Natural Resources Management at South Eastern Kenya University. She is also a National Geographic Explorer, and Education and Science Officer of the Society for Conservation Biology, Africa Chapter. She has studied the valuation and mapping of mangrove ecosystem services in Mida Creek, and has received a National Geographic Society Early Career Grant to carry out a project on mapping of mangrove ecosystem services flow in Mtwapa Creek. She is also interested in adopting the ecosystem services approach to the management of aquatic ecosystems, particularly the mangroves of Kenya. She leads a research group that will study the management and conservation of mangroves as an important ecosystem along the coast. She has also been working on enhancing community involvement and participation in conservation through tree planting initiatives.

Click here to listen to episode 34 on Mangrove Forests featuring Dr. Awuor Owuor’s interview.

Dr. Travis Wagner is a Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of Southern Maine. Dr. Wagner’s research focuses on sustainable material management especially the application of zero waste principles to eliminate, reduce, and recover single-use consumer plastics with innovative environmental policy instruments. Prior to teaching, Dr. Wagner worked for a series of environmental firms focusing on a variety of environmental projects including solid and hazardous waste policy development; contaminated site remediation; pollution prevention; and regulatory compliance. He has published several papers on policy instruments to reduce the use of single-use plastics such as straws and bags.

Click here to listen to episode 33 on Plastic Straws featuring Dr. Wagner’s interview.

Dr. Peter Dauvergne is a Professor of International Relations at the University of British Columbia. His research covers the politics of social movements, consumption, technology, and corporations, especially the consequences for social inequality and ecosystem degradation in the global South. Dr. Dauvergne has published 18 books, including AI in the Wild: Sustainability in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (MIT Press, September 2020), Environmentalism of the Rich (MIT, 2016, winner of APSA’s Michael Harrington Book Award), Protest Inc. (with G. LeBaron, Polity, 2014, shortlisted for BISA’s IPE Book Prize), and The Shadows of Consumption (MIT, 2008, winner of the Gerald L. Young Book Award). He is also the founding and past editor of the journal Global Environmental Politics. In 2016, the International Studies Association presented him with its Distinguished Scholar Award for Environmental Studies, and in 2018, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Click here to listen to episode 32 on Artificial Intelligence featuring Dr. Dauvergne’s interview.

Dr. Žiga Malek is an Assistant Professor in Land Use and Ecosystem Dynamics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. His main research interests are the changes to land systems and the associated consequences to sustainable use of land and ecosystems. Dr. Malek has experience in working on various sustainability issues from all around the world: wetland protection in the Pacific, woodland degradation in East Africa, lagoon management in the Caribbean, land use and water interactions in Northern Africa and Middle East, agricultural expansion in the Amazon basin, forest management in Central Asia, multifunctional landscapes in the Mediterranean, and smallholder adaptation to future climate change in tropical regions, to name a few. He is also involved in numerous consultancy activities, with consultancy projects commissioned among others by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, United Nations Development Programme, European Commission, Inter-American Development Bank, European Environment Agency and Fairtrade International.

Click here to listen to episode 31 on Landslides featuring Dr. Malek’s interview.

Dr. Susan Park is a Professor of Global Governance at the University of Sydney in Australia. Dr. Park’s research examines both Accountability in Global Environmental Governance, and the rise, spread and efficacy of accountability mechanisms that have been created by Multilateral Development Banks in order to redress the negative impacts of development projects on local communities. She is Associate Editor of Global Environmental Politics, and was the chair of the fifth Oceanic International Studies Conference, a biennial event that is the largest conference on international relations and international studies in Australia and New Zealand. Dr. Park was the editor of Global Environmental Governance and the Accountability Trap.

Click here to listen to episode 30 on International Accountability featuring Dr. Park’s interview.

Dr. Pamela Templer is a Professor of Biology at Boston University. Dr. Templer leads the Templer Lab, which explores how plant-microbial interactions influence carbon exchange, nitrogen retention, forest productivity, and water and air quality, and collaborates with governments, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector. Dr. Templer has done extensive fieldwork in temperate forests of the northeastern United States, urban sites throughout the Greater Boston Area, and tropical forests of Mexico. Some of her recent work studied the effects of snowpack decline and soil freezing on northern forest tree growth, including the sugar maples that are home to New England’s maple syrup industry.

Click here to listen to episode 29 on Maple Syrup featuring Dr. Templer’s interview.

Dr. Kevin Lane is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Health at Boston University. Dr. Lane’s research focuses on air pollution, built environment, urbanization, and impacts of climate change on health in local, national, and international settings. Currently, Dr. Lane serves as Principal Investigator for the Federal Aviation Administration ASCENT Project 18 Community Measurements of Aviation Emissions Contribution to Ambient Air Quality. Additionally, he examines air pollution and built environment effects on cardio-metabolic health with the Population study of Urban, Rural and Semi-urban Endovascular Disease and Holistic Intervention Study (PURSE-HIS), and is a designated NIEHS health disparities career development researcher with the Center for Research on Environmental and Social Stressors in Housing across the life course (CRESSH) to examine the interactions between PM2.5, NO2 and social stressors on the associations with preterm and low birth weight.

Click here to listen to episode 28 on Airplanes featuring Dr. Lane’s interview.

Dr. Peter Fox-Penner is Founder and Director of the Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy and Professor of Practice at the Questrom School of Business, where he co-directs the Impact Measurement and Allocation Program (IMAP) of research in sustainable finance. In addition, he is a Partner and Chief Strategy Officer of Energy Impact Partners, one of the largest dedicated clean energy private equity fund groups in the world and an academic advisor to The Brattle Group. He is on the global leadership council of the World Resources Institute and on the advisory boards of Mobility Impact Partners, the National Regulatory Research Institute’s Training Initiative, and PEACE. Dr. Fox-Penner also formerly served as a senior official at the U.S. Department of Energy and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He is the author of numerous published articles and books, including the highly acclaimed Smart Power: Climate Change, the Smart Grid, and the Future of Electric Utilities (Island Press, 2010) and its sequel Power After Carbon: Building a Clean, Resilient Grid (Harvard University Press, 2020). His research and writing interests are in the areas of electric power strategy, regulation, and governance; energy and climate policy; sustainable finance; and the relationships between public and private economic activity.

Click here to listen to episode 27 on Electrification featuring Dr. Fox-Penner’s interview.

Dr. Michael Gevelber is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Boston University. Dr. Gevelber’s research includes improving energy efficiency of buildings including developing a new system identification approach that helps optimize air flow in existing commercial buildings, and conducting energy assessments for urban housing and universities. Dr. Gevelber has lead a class which has conducted the first detailed energy audit for the Boston University’s Campus, which included identifying and implementing possible conservation options. He serves on the university’s Sustainability Committee, co-chairs the university’s energy working group, is a member of the universities Clean Energy and Environmental Initiative, which is focused on integrating the research efforts across the various colleges on campus, and serves on Newton’s Energy Commission. He is also the founder and manager of Cyber Materials LLC, which develops advanced control solutions to improve manufacturing processes, and a co-founder of Aeolus Building Efficiency, winner of the 2013 energy efficiency track of the MIT Clean Energy Contest.

Click here to listen to episode 26 on Ventilation featuring Dr. Gevelber’s interview.

Dennis Carlberg is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Earth & Environment department at Boston University and the Associate Vice President of University Sustainability. Dennis co-chairs the Climate Resilience Committee at the Urban Land Institute – Boston, which was formed in 2011 to educate and motivate the Boston-area real estate community to actively address climate change, sea level rise, climate resilience planning and policy development. Dennis currently serves on the Boston Green Ribbon Commission Higher Ed Working Group, the City of Boston’s Zero Waste Advisory Committee, and the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s (AASHE) STARS Steering Committee. At Boston University he serves on the advisory boards of the Institute for Sustainable Energy, City Planning Program and Urban Affairs, the Urban Climate Research Initiative, and the URBAN Graduate Program. Dennis is responsible for managing the implementation and ongoing evolution, evaluation and reporting of Boston University’s Climate Action Plan.

Click here to listen to episode 25 on Carbon Neutrality featuring Dennis’s interview.

Dr. Graeme Auld is a Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University in Canada. Dr. Auld’s research focuses on comparative environmental politics and policy, global environmental governance, and the rise of private governance and authority. Much of his work examines the formation, evolution, and impacts of non-state and hybrid forms of global governance across economic sectors. He is the author of Constructing Private Governance: The Rise and Evolution of Forest, Coffee, and Fisheries Certification, which explores product certification programs and the factors that explain their varied success in becoming global governors equipped to tackle environmental and social problems effectively.

Click here to listen to episode 24 on Organic and Fair Trade Certifications featuring Dr. Auld’s interview.

Dr. Michael Dietze is an Associate Professor of Earth & Environment at Boston University. Dr. Dietze leads the Ecological Forecasting Laboratory, the mission of which is to better understand and predict ecological systems. Much of the current work in the lab is organized under two broad umbrellas, the Near-term Ecological Forecasting Initiative (NEFI) and the PEcAn project. NEFI is focused on addressing overarching questions about ecological predictability while developing forecasts for a wide range of ecological processes (vegetation phenology and land-surface fluxes; ticks, tick-borne disease, and small mammal hosts; soil microbiome; aquatic productivity and algal blooms) and advancing statistical and informatics tools for ecological forecasting. PEcAn is focused more specifically on the terrestrial carbon cycle, improving our capacity for carbon MRV (monitoring, reporting, verification), forecasting, data assimilation, and multi-model benchmarking and calibration within the land component of Earth System models. Dr. Dietze is the author of Ecological Forecasting, and a coauthor of the 2020 study “Pervasive shifts in forest dynamics in a changing world,” which was published in Science Magazine.

Click here to listen to episode 23 on Old-Growth Forests featuring Dr. Dietze’s interview.

Dr. Douglas Arion is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Donald D. Hedberg Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Carthage College. Dr. Arion is also the Executive Director of Mountains of Stars, a partnership of colleges that offers astronomy-based programs and activities to the public to promote “environmental awareness from a cosmic perspective.” Prior to Carthage, he was head of the Applied Physics and Engineering Division and Assistant Vice President at Science Applications International Corporation, developing and directing research in radiation effects, space systems, and electro- and optical-mechanical systems. He also serves on the dark sky preservation commissions of both the American Astronomical Society and International Astronomical Union, and is an International Dark Sky Ambassador.

Click here to listen to episode 22 on Light Pollution featuring Dr. Arion’s interview.

Dr. Luz Claudio is a tenured professor of environmental medicine and public health at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. She is also Chief of the Division of International Health. Her research focuses on how environmental factors affect health in vulnerable populations such as children and those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged. She is best known for studies on health disparities in children and for her work in global health. Her recent paper, “Combined association of BTEX and material hardship on ADHD-suggestive behaviours among a nationally representative sample of US children,” found a link between ADHD and toxic air pollutants in marginalized communities.

Click here to listen to episode 21 on ADHD featuring Dr. Claudio’s interview.

Dr. Jennifer Allan is a Lecturer in International Relations at Cardiff University in Wales. Through contributing to the Earth Negotiations Bulletin – the de facto record of global environmental negotiations, Dr. Allan has attended roughly 40 UN conferences where states negotiate the rules of global climate governance, as well as chemicals and wastes management, and has published over 100 Bulletins with her ENB colleagues. Her recent work focuses on the politics of sustainable post-COVID recoveries, including green stimulus packages in the UK and the emergence of the green recovery norm globally. She is part of the COP26 Universities Network, a growing group of more than 30 UK-based universities that created a briefing this year for policymakers outlining a path to net-zero emissions economic recovery from COVID-19.

Click here to listen to episode 20 on the Economic Recovery from Coronavirus featuring Jennifer Allan’s interview.

Dr. Noelle Eckley Selin is Associate Professor in the Institute for Data, Systems and Society and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and Director of MIT’s Technology and Policy Program. Her research uses modeling and analysis to inform sustainability decision-making, focusing on issues involving air pollution, climate change and hazardous substances such as mercury. She received her PhD and M.A. (Earth and Planetary Sciences) and B.A. (Environmental Science and Public Policy) from Harvard University. Her work has focused on atmospheric chemistry, air pollution, as well as interactions between science and policy in international environmental negotiations. She is the recipient of a U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER award (2011), a Leopold Leadership fellow (2013-2014), Kavli fellow (2015), a member of the Global Young Academy (2014-2018), an American Association for the Advancement of Science Leshner Leadership Institute Fellow (2016-2017), and a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow at the Technical University of Munich Institute for Advanced Study (2018-2021).

Click here to listen to Episode 19 on Mercury featuring Noelle Selin’s interview.

Dr. Patricia Keen is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Energy Management at the New York Institute of Technology, Vancouver Campus. Dr. Keen’s research focuses on antimicrobial resistance genes and antimicrobial resistant organisms as environmental contaminants, environmental effects of trace metal, inorganic and organic pollutants on water quality, and the fate and effects of emerging contaminants in the wastewater treatment process. She has published several papers on antimicrobial resistance and co-edited two books: Antimicrobial Resistance in the Environment and Antimicrobial Resistance in the Wastewater Treatment Process.

Click here to listen to Episode 18 on Wastewater Treatment Plants featuring Patricia Keen’s interview.

Dr. Julie Zähringer is an Assistant Professor of Land Systems and Sustainability Transformations at the University of Bern’s Wyss Academy for Nature in Switzerland. Dr. Zähringer’s research focuses on land use changes, ecosystem services, and human well-being in the context of land investments and conservation in view of sustainable development in East Africa and South-East Asia. She has done extensive fieldwork in Northeastern Madagascar, and published several papers on cash crops in the region such as vanilla and clove. She is also a Co-leader of a scientific working group on “Telecoupling Research Towards Sustainable Transformation of Land Systems” within Future Earth’s Global Land Programme.

Click here to listen to Episode 17 on Vanilla featuring Julie Zähringer’s interview.

Dr. Jennifer Le Zotte is an Assistant Professor of U.S. History and material culture at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Dr. Le Zotte also authored the book From Goodwill to Grunge: A History of Secondhand Styles and Alternative Economies (UNC Press, 2017), which looks at how secondhand goods sold at thrift stores, flea markets, and garage sales came to be both profitable and culturally influential. Her work has appeared at CNNOpinion.com, smithsonianmag.com, Racked.com, theconversation.com, as well as in Winterthur Portfolio, The New England Quarterly, and Business History.

Click here to listen to Episode 16 on Fast Fashion featuring Jennifer Le Zotte’s interview.

Dr. Christopher R. Conz is a lecturer at Tufts University teaching African History, and he teaches writing seminars at Boston University on African environmental studies. His studies focus on the intersections of knowledge, agriculture, health, and development in Lesotho. This year, he published a paper entitled “(Un)Cultivating the Disease of Maize: Pellagra, Policy and Nutrition Practice in Lesotho, c.1933–1963” in The Journal of Southern African Studies.

Click here to listen to Episode 15 on Pellagra featuring Christopher Conz’s interview.

Dr. Madhu Dutta-Koehler is an Associate Professor of Practice and Director, City Planning and Urban Affairs at the Boston University Metropolitan College. Dr. Dutta-Koehler’s current research interests include climate change adaptation — particularly in the urban Global South — and environmental sustainability in the built environment. Dr. Dutta-Koehler has over fifteen years of experience in the field of urban planning, design, and architecture as an educator, researcher, and practitioner. Dr. Dutta-Koehler also serves on the Faculty Advisory Boards for the Initiative on Cities and the Institute of Sustainable Energy, and is a Faculty Associate at the Pardee Center for the Longer Term Future at Boston University.⁠

Click here to listen to Episode 14 on Megacities featuring Madhu Dutta-Koehler’s interview.

Dr. Syma A. Ebbin is an Associate Professor in Residence at the University of Connecticut College of Agriculture, Health, and Natural Resources. Her research has focused on developing better understandings of subsistence harvesting of coastal resources, marine spatial planning efforts in Long Island Sound, participatory management approaches including the Native American co-management of Pacific salmon in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest and soft shell clam co-management in the Georges River region of Maine. She is also the Research Coordinator of the Connecticut Sea Grant at UConn.⁠

Click here to listen to Episode 13 on Wild Salmon featuring Syma Ebbin’s interview.

Dr. Adil Najam is the Inaugural Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. Before becoming the Dean, Dr. Najam served as Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Lahore, Pakistan and as the Director of the Boston University Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. Dr. Najam was a co-author for the Third and Fourth Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, work for which the scientific panel was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for advancing the public understanding of climate change science. In 2008 he was invited by the United Nations Secretary-General to serve on the UN Committee on Development (CDP). Dr. Najam has written over 100 scholarly papers and book chapters.

Click here to listen to Episode 12 on Rethinking Climate Change, featuring Adil Najam’s interview.

Dr. Valerie Pasquarella is a Research Assistant Professor at the Boston University College of Arts and Sciences in the Department of Earth and Environment. Her research focuses mainly on the intersection of remote sensing and ecology along with the mapping and monitoring of landscape dynamics. In 2018, Dr. Pasquarella published a paper in the journal Biological Invasions on gypsy moth related defoliation in Southern New England.⁠

Click here to listen to Episode 11 on Gypsy Moths featuring Valerie Pasquarella’s interview.

Dr. Henrik Selin is the Associate Dean for Studies at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. He is also an Associate Professor of International Relations specializing in global and regional politics and policy making on environment and sustainable development. He is the author of the book EU and Environmental Governance, and is the co-editor of two books: Changing Climates in North American Politics: Institutions, Policymaking, and Multilevel Governance, and Transatlantic Environment and Energy Politics: Comparative and International Perspectives.⁠

Click here to listen to Episode 10 on the United Nations Environment Programme featuring Henrik Selin’s interview.

Dr. Elizabeth Garland is a Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She has been Director of the EMPH Division of Preventive Medicine and Community Health since 2002 and as Director of the General Preventive Medicine Residency since 1995. She is also the Principle Investigator on a Children’s Environmental Health Foundation study to evaluate the impact of LEED-certified green housing on asthma, obesity, and social factors in the South Bronx.⁠

Click here to listen to Episode 9 on Asthma featuring Elizabeth Garland’s interview.

Dr. Nathan Phillips is an Earth & Environment Professor at Boston University and the Acting Director of the BU Institute for Sustainability’s Sustainable Neighborhood Lab. His research focuses on physiological mechanisms that regulate water, carbon, and energy exchanges between plants/ecosystems and the environment as it pertains to environmental change, particularly in cities. Dr. Phillips has been one of the most vocal critics of the Weymouth Compressor Station project, and has worked closely with the local community group Fore River Residents Against Compressor Station (FRRACS).

Click here to listen to Episode 8 on Natural Gas Compressor Stations featuring Nathan Phillips’ interview.

Dr. Robert Buchwaldt is a Research Assistant Professor in the Earth & Environment department at Boston University, specifically focused on geology and earth science. One of Dr. Buchwaldt’s primary research interests is plate tectonics, which in addition to causing earthquakes, cause volcanoes, and help geologists trace the earth’s history and climate back millions of years. Dr. Buchwaldt has published dozens of scientific papers on geology, acts as a reviewer on several ranking journals including Nature, and was a scientific adviser on BBC’s “Madagascar” and “Earth” with David Attenborough.⁠

Click here to listen to Episode 7 on Earthquakes featuring Robert Buchwaldt’s interview.

Dr. Julie Klinger is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware. Dr. Klinger’s research focuses on the geography, geology and geopolitics of development and resource usage, with a particular emphasis on social and environmental sustainability. Klinger is the author of Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes which won the 2017 Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography given by the American Association of Geographers (AAG).⁠

Click here to listen to Episode 6 on Rare Earth Minerals featuring Julie Klinger’s interview.

Dr. Rachael Garrett is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy at ETH Zürich. Dr. Garrett’s research examines interactions between agriculture, ecosystem services, and economic development to better define what sustainable food systems look like and how to achieve them. She has spent years interviewing Brazilian farmers to better understand the challenges of extensive cattle ranching and deforestation in the Amazon. She is also on the editorial board for LAND.

Click here to listen to Episode 5 on Beef featuring Rachael Garrett’s interview.

Rick Reibstein is a Lecturer in Boston University’s Earth & Environment department, the Principal Director of the Coalition for a Public Conversation on Lead, and the Founder and Director of the Regulated Community Compliance Project which is focused on ensuring that real estate professionals understand the federal requirements pertaining to lead paint in residences. Professor Reibstein previously worked for 27 years as the Assistant Director of the Massachusetts Office of Technical Assistance, where he helped nearly 2,000 facilities to reduce the use of toxics. From 2000-2003, he worked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, mostly enforcing the lead disclosure rule.⁠

Click here to listen to Episode 4 on Lead Paint featuring Rick Reibstein’s interview.

Dr. Sarah Phillips is a Professor of History at Boston University and the Co-Executive Editor of Cambridge’s Modern American History journal. Some of her primary research interests are history of land use and conservation, environmental history, and history of the American West. She is the author of the book This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal, which posits a new interpretation of the New Deal, saying that it used conversation and environmental policy to economically rehabilitate rural areas and in doing so, gained their support for large government land management institutions.⁠

Click here to listen to Episode 3 on Yosemite National Park featuring Sarah Phillips’ interview.

Christopher Brown is the Co-Founder and CEO of Teed & Brown, a company that “combines science with practical knowledge to provide unique lawn care solutions” for Connecticut and New York homes. Prior to launching Teed & Brown, Chris received a Bachelor’s in Turfgrass Science at Penn State, and served as Assistant Superintendent at Rockrimmon Country Club in Stamford, CT. Teed & Brown is known for investing in safe, high quality pest control products, and employs strategies like Integrated Pest Management.

Click here to listen to Episode 2 on Lawn Pesticides featuring Christopher Brown’s interview.

Dr. Cutler Cleveland is a Professor of Earth and Environment at Boston University and Associate Director of the Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy. Dr. Cleveland’s research and teaching focus on the connection among energy, climate change, and sustainability. He recently served as the principal investigator for Carbon Free Boston, a technical assessment of strategies with a significant focus in transportation policy, to assist the City of Boston in reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.

Click here to listen to Episode 1 on Traffic, featuring Cutler Cleveland’s interview.