SLF Search

Use the search form below to look through all of the past Sustainability Leadership Cohorts that we have housed.

Name	SLF Cohort Year	Content
Maksim Sergeyev	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Postdoctoral Fellow, Colorado Natural Heritage Program Research Summary: My research focuses on understanding the dynamics of prairie dog population cycles in the context of plague, livestock grazing, and carnivore biodiversity within grassland ecosystems in the western United States. Currently, prairie dog populations experience drastic cycles from extreme lows, due to plague, to extreme highs after recovery from plague events. At the low extreme, this can have adverse effects on ecosystem processes and local biodiversity while at the other extreme, high populations cause conflict with ranchers that use the grasslands for livestock forage. Our research focuses on balancing these competing interests and establishing more stable dynamics. Mentor: Ana Davidson
Samuel Lewis	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Ph.D. Student, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary: Conservation of native fish is a critical issue facing many regions around the world from increasing water scarcity and the impacts of invasive species. My doctoral research aims to understand the interactions between ecological, physical, and social factors that influence riverine ecosystems by performing three interrelated tasks: A literature review of in-stream flow requirements for fish, an analysis of the effects of salinity on invasive mosquitofish, and an analysis of water users understanding of river management. Through this research, I aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of riverine systems and assist in the recovery of native fish. Advisor: Yoichiro Kanno
Joshua Carrell	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Ph.D. Student, Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship Research Summary: I use data to understand how plants respond to changes in their environment, which generally follows two themes: Biological and Social. I am interested in how plants respond biologically to variations in climate in terms of their growth, reproduction, and mortality. Additionally, I am fascinated with the decision process behind the management of plants. I am concerned with the selection of tools, methods, and financial commitments we make regarding conservation and sustainability practices. I seek to share my outcomes and results with a variety of stakeholders through compelling spatial maps, web applications, and visualizations. Advisor: Sarah J. Hart
Randall Bonnell	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Geosciences Research Summary: I evaluate methods for mapping snow water resources from radar satellites. Snow provides water for >1.3 billion people, but its sustainable management is challenged by increasing demands and climate change. Current methods for mapping snow storage are inaccurate in mountain environments, where the majority of snow accumulates. Radar satellites have high spatial resolution and an established theoretical framework for mapping snow storage. If these methods are well-validated, future radar satellites will map snow storage in remote regions, such as the Himalayas, for the first time, providing invaluable snow metrics to water resource managers across the globe. Advisor: Dan McGrath
Alyssa Stansfield	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: I research how climate change is impacting hurricanes, with a focus on their rainfall. I utilize both climate models and observations from satellites to explore how much more rainfall hurricanes produce with every 1°C of climate warming and the factors that cause this increase in rainfall. This research is important because it can help coastal communities prepare for the dangerous hazards caused by hurricane landfalls in the future, such as flash flooding and landslides. Mentor: Kristen Rasmussen
Ben Platt	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Ph.D. Student, Department of Mechanical Engineering Research Summary: As climate change and growing energy demands become increasingly important challenges, greater focus is being placed on efficiently and effectively utilizing our energy resources. Currently, over 65% of energy produced in the United States is wasted as low temperature waste heat. My research focuses on the development of waste heat powered cooling technology. This technology has the potential to utilize thermal energy that would normally be wasted and convert it to useful cooling power. I am currently working to integrate this technology with traditional cooling technologies to improve the versatility and economic viability of the technology. Advisor: Todd Bandhauer
Fawzi Khalife	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and the Department of Construction Management Research Summary: In my research, I am examining the social impacts of the built environment, i.e. the buildings, roads, utilities, and infrastructure systems around us. By looking into these impacts, I am identifying methods to incorporate social equity and fairness into engineering practices, which aims at ensuring a fair distribution of the costs and benefits of such systems. I am currently focusing on the transportation sector, like highways and transit, which has been causing social inequities by displacing certain communities more than others, polluting the environment, and changing the character of many areas, i.e. gentrification. Advisor: Mehmet Ozbek
Mohamed Abdelhafez	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Ph.D. Student, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Research Summary: I am interested in understanding how resilient and sustainable industrial communities on the effect of climate change. Sea Level Rise is considered to be one of the main impacts of climate change as it threatens the coastal communities with flooding and inundation hazards. Since natural hazards such as hurricanes and flooding have resulted in billions of dollars in damage annually, the emphasis of my present research has been on these natural hazards coupled with future SLR. One of my recent publications showed the hidden costs to building foundations due to sea level rise along the Gulf of Mexico. Advisor: Hussam Mahmoud
Alex Siggers	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Ph.D. Student, Department of Biology and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: I use field and greenhouse experiments to investigate how drought changes interactions between plants and the microscopic bacteria and fungi in the soil. Human-driven climate change is predicted to cause more frequent and severe drought events. Plants can buffer drought impacts on soil through changes in individual functions like nutrient uptake. As plant communities shift under a changing climate, soil communities are expected to be altered, which can reciprocally influence plant functionality. It is critical to understand how plants and soil microbes will respond to climate change due to their major role in maintaining ecosystem services, such as carbon storage. Advisor: Melinda D. Smith
Mj Riches	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Chemistry Research Summary: I study how climate change affects the chemicals that plants emit. These plant emissions are highly volatile and reactive in the atmosphere, they can remove or form ozone and promote the creation of secondary organic aerosol, thus contributing to global warming and cooling. However, the effects of changing climate conditions on plants are poorly understood. I have studied how temperature, humidity, and snow impact emissions, but most recently I have investigated the intricate ways by which wildfire smoke harms leaves and subsequently changes their emissions. These findings will provide information valuable to improving the models that predict future climate conditions. Mentor: Delphine Farmer
Sabari Kumar	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Ph.D. Student, Department of Chemistry Research Summary: I use techniques from machine learning, applied mathematics, and quantum chemistry to design novel renewable biofuels that are both clean-burning and sustainable. Using the results of accurate, high-throughput calculations, I build databases of molecular properties, which I subsequently use to create and train predictive machine learning models that design low-impact fuels to power future transport modalities. I also develop novel analytic techniques to tie the learned behaviors of these models back to the fundamental physics governing the complex chemical environments encountered in fuel combustion. Advisor: Seonah Kim
Emilia Ravetta	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Sociology Research Summary: Given the global transition away from carbon-dependent economies and growing tendency towards internationalization of mining activities, there is an increase of international regulations and environmental local policies are rapidly changing, as well as the governance of environmental conflicts and the definitions of environmental harms and crimes. Seeking to understand the developing strategies and local environmental conditions in Latin America, my research focuses on the power relationships of groups involved in mining conflicts and decisions about mining at a local level: international mining companies, local States, and social movements, based on different understandings of environmental harm and crime. Advisor: Stephanie Malin and KuoRay Mao
Vedanshi Nevatia	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Ph.D. Student, Department of Economics Research Summary: My research aims to build a developing country macroeconomic model to analyze the effect of clean-energy transition on inequality in the long run. Majority of the climate-change models, used widely to build global mitigation policies today, assume "developed" country conditions; for example perfectly accessible financial markets or near-equitable income distribution across households. Although recent climate reports acknowledge the difficulties poorer countries face in green financing, there still exists a gap in literature that conclusively proves this. I therefore, also use data on Green Bonds to quantitatively study the regionally-differentiated cost of capital for renewable energy development. Advisor: Daniele Tavani
Srijesh Pradhan	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Construction Management and the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Research Summary: I am studying the impacts of wildfires on U.S. lumber supply chains. Global climate change has resulted in frequent wildfire incidents across the Western U.S. which impacts the availability of building materials such as lumber. In the U.S., sawlogs from forests constitute a major raw material for building grade lumber products, which is widely used in single-family residential construction. As wildfires burn down homes and forests, demand for lumber increases while supply decreases. Therefore, I am investigating whether the lumber supply chain is resilient enough to fulfill the heightened demand for lumber after wildfire events. Advisor: Erin Arneson
Huma Tariq	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Ph.D. Student, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences Research Summary: Conventional produced water (PW) is a byproduct of conventional oil and gas production which doesn't involve hydraulic fracturing or horizontal drilling throughout the drilling process. Owing to its comparatively lower concentration of salts and other toxic compounds, this water can be a feasible option for crop irrigation. Still the concerns related to alkalinity, salts and boron toxicity need to be seriously considered. Therefore, with the help of a greenhouse irrigation study we conducted an in-depth characterization of the accumulative effects of conventional PW irrigation on soil health, microbial diversity, crop production and metabolism. Advisor: Thomas Borch
Sam Leuthold	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: When agricultural crops are harvested, a portion of the plant remains in the field. Over time, some of this residue makes its way into the soil and becomes soil organic matter. This organic matter provides a host of benefits to cropping systems-- providing nutrients, improving soil structure, and acting as a sink for atmospheric carbon. My work uses a combination of field, lab, and greenhouse experiments to understand how organic matter determines cropping system outcomes, such as yield, stability, and climate resilience. By understanding these biogeochemical dynamics, we improve outcomes for both farmers and downstream communities. Advisor: Francesca Cotrufo
Lily Durkee	2023-2024	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Agricultural Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: Environmental change, like pollution events or climate warming, can cause animal and plant populations to decline. One strategy that can enable populations to persist under these circumstances is adaptive evolution, or adaptation. My research focuses on how to manage populations after the onset of environmental stress. Specifically, I study how different processes, including increasing genetic diversity or facilitating immigration, influence rapid adaptation to new environments. My work has applications in conservation, where promoting adaptation can be necessary to sustain populations, as well as in agricultural systems, where inhibiting adaptation is instead desired for minimizing the impact of pest species. Advisor: Ruth Hufbauer
Mary Witlacil	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science Research Summary: Our contemporary political moment is rife with governmental antipathy for systemic problems. There are countless intractable structural obstacles and an equal number of politically unpalatable solutions. There are solutions humanity has the technological capacity to entertain, but not the political initiative to pursue. While this may be evident, it is challenging to effectively frame environmental problems for successful political outcomes. How we think about climate change and environmental politics matters for how we conceptualize solutions to environmental problems. My dissertation focuses on developing a theory of ecopessimism to think through governmental recalcitrance to address climate change, sustainability, and ecosystemic destruction. Advisor: Bradley Macdonald
Michelan Wilson	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Economics Research Summary: My research focuses on valuing ecosystem services as an input into fishery production. I examine the relationship between water quality indicators (oxygen saturation and nutrient loads) and the productivity of marine and freshwater fisheries. This is important because fishery production is an important source of income for many people across the world and as such, fishery management aims at improving the likelihood of sustainable fisheries to ensure equitable allocation of fishery resources and profits. In my research, I model fishery production as dependent on water quality. I then find the impact of changing water quality on welfare. Advisor: Edward Barbier
Sheela Turbek	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Biology Research Summary: My postdoctoral research uses genetic information from museum specimens and contemporary samples of the willow flycatcher, a federally endangered migratory bird, to study migratory patterns and adaptation to climate change over the past century. Specifically, I am using patterns of genetic variation across the species range to examine the degree to which breeding and wintering populations are connected across the annual cycle. In addition, I am investigating whether particular genetic variants associated with climate variables, such as temperature, have increased in frequency since the early 1900s, which would indicate that the species is adapting to a warming climate. Advisor: Kristen Ruegg
Sahar Toulabi	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture Research Summary: My research involves a multidisciplinary approach involving omics, biochemistry, and pre-clinical study to gain an understanding of the relationships between different crop cultivars and their bioactive compounds on cardiometabolic diseases, such as hypertension and obesity. My passion is to improve crop nutritional quality as a translational delivery vehicle for health. My crop model is potato as it is one of the best candidates to provide a sustainable healthy nutritious diet for all. Advisor: David Holm
Valerie Seitz	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture and Cell & Molecular Biology Research Summary: In modern agriculture, cover crops are plants utilized to benefit soil health by increasing carbon and nitrogen content, suppressing weeds and pests, and promoting soil stability. In my research, we investigate how variations in small molecules released by cover crop roots influence the community of microorganisms that inhabit the soil. We have found that each species of cover crop releases a unique buffet of small molecules into the soil for microbial partners to dish up on! Underpinning these dynamic molecular interactions is a foundational step in maintaining the health and productivity of agricultural soils to meet increasing food demands. Advisor: Jessica Prenni
Débora Nunes	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Ph.D. Student, Department of Economics Research Summary: Substantial microlevel evidence indicates that, due to unpaid care responsibilities in the household and underpaid opportunities in a segmented job market, women in Latin America (and elsewhere) suffer intense and unique impacts from deforestation. Dialoguing with that literature, my research investigates the presence and action of institutions focused on promoting gender equality in the region, measuring if policy and advocacy from such organizations successfully decreases deforestation, ultimately increasing living conditions and opportunities for Latina women. I approach the data from a macroeconomic perspective, focusing on care work, job market conditions, environmental sustainability, and gender equality as areas of interest. Advisor: Elissa Braunstein
Clara Mosso	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Ph.D. Student, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: My research will determine the effects of different urban expansion scenarios on the provision of ecosystem services related to water yield and water quality for the cities of Aspen (Colorado, US) and San Martín de los Andes (Neuquén, Argentina). Through participatory mapping activities with local stakeholders, I will identify different future development scenarios for each city. I will then use these development scenarios as inputs for biophysical water yield and water quality models and estimate the changes in the provision of these two ecosystem services. The information generated will contribute to inform land use planning decisions in the wildland-urban interface. Advisor: Stephanie Kampf
Kathryn Moore	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Ph.D. Student, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: I'm researching how aerosol particles influence the clouds near Antarctica. I study rare aerosols called Ice Nucleating Particles (INPs), which cause water droplets to freeze in clouds. Cloud phase - whether a cloud is composed of liquid water, ice crystals, or both - determines how much sunlight a cloud reflects, how long it lives, and how much it precipitates. Antarctic clouds play a crucial role in global climate, influencing weather patterns, ocean currents, sea ice cover, and even rainfall in the tropics, so understanding how INPs influence these clouds is essential for predicting future climate. Advisor: Sonia Kreidenweis and Paul DeMott
Coby McDonald	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology and Biology Research Summary: I am a disease ecologist and a veterinarian, and I study how vertebrate hosts respond and adapt to infectious diseases. At CSU, I am studying Florida panthers, which are a highly endangered subspecies of mountain lions. My research focuses on understanding why Florida panthers are uniquely susceptible to viral diseases, and how this susceptibility has shifted with small population sizes and consequent high levels of inbreeding. I am particularly interested in integrating knowledge of disease susceptibility into conservation and genetic restoration management for Florida panthers and other similarly threatened wildlife populations. Advisor: Sue VandeWoude and W. Chris Funk
Mary Linabury	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: I study how humans impact grasslands. With the rise of industrial agriculture, nitrogen fertilization has altered ecosystems across the world. In addition, climate change threatens these systems with unpredictable weather patterns from droughts to floods. My research uses a "pulse-press" framework to understand how nitrogen fertilization and climate change interact to alter grassland plant communities. Under this framework, "presses" occur continuously over time (nitrogen fertilization), while "pulses" are discrete (large rainfall events). Continuous nitrogen fertilization combined with a large rainstorm may result in critical thresholds being crossed, causing dramatic plant community change followed by shifts in grassland dynamics and function. Advisor: Melinda D. Smith
Julieta Juncosa Calahorrano	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: I am interested in understanding the chemical composition of the atmosphere and how it impacts humans and ecosystem health. In particular, I study reactive nitrogen (Nr), which are a subset of chemical species that have the potential to impact local and regional air quality and ecosystems. One of my projects focuses on how different Nr species in smoke plumes evolve as they are transported downwind from the fire source. Currently, I am studying emissions of ammonia (NH3) from agricultural facilities in Colorado and how those interact with urban emissions. For my analysis, I am using both in-situ and satellite observations. Advisor: Emily V. Fischer
Emily Iskin	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Geosciences Research Summary: I study how floodplains differ for diverse rivers in the USA. Floodplains are dynamic, as their shape and size can change depending on how much water flows during a flood. They capture water, sediment, and organic material, and provide habitat. I collect GPS data and soil samples from floodplain patches in the field, and digital elevation and multispectral images online that cover the field sites. I combine the data in mapping and statistical software in order to see how the floodplains differ between rivers. This informs floodplain restoration efforts on what a natural floodplain looks like and how it functions. Advisor: Ellen Wohl
Bennett Hardy	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: The emergence of infectious diseases and their global impact are well documented by recent outbreaks across human, domestic livestock, and wildlife systems. In fact, an amphibian fungal pathogen is currently responsible for the largest loss of global biodiversity ever attributed to a single disease. While many diseases cause catastrophic harm to host populations, variation in response to disease exists. Some populations become extinct, while others persist at lower abundances, or even rebound to pre-disease levels. My research examines how different amphibian populations respond to disease presence to better understand why some populations persist, while others perish. Advisor: Larissa Bailey and Chris Funk
Olivia Hajek	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Ph.D. Student, Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: Ecologists have long recognized the importance of seasonal variations in both temperature and precipitation for understanding the distribution of different ecosystems and their functioning. But from a climate change perspective, most ecological research has focused on the consequences of alterations in seasonal temperatures for plant growth and ecosystem function. For my research, I am evaluating how climate change may shift seasonal patterns of water availability and the ecological consequences of these shifts in the Great Plains. Changes to seasonal patterns of water availability can have profound effects in this region, altering regional climate, forage production, and feedbacks to carbon cycling. Advisor: Alan Knapp
Saeideh Esmaeili	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability and Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory Research Summary: I am a wildlife biologist working on large mammal populations and their habitats. My work focuses on how animals interact with their environment and respond to surrounding features, including human presence. The outcome of my research provides wildlife managers with science-based strategies to better conserve and manage populations and their habitats. I am currently studying movements and habitat selection of feral equid populations, as well as other endangered wild members of horse family. Meanwhile, I explore mechanisms underlying animals' decisions to use their habitat, which contributes to the progress of ecology as a science. Advisor: Sarah R. B. King
Matthew DeSaix	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology Research Summary: Climate change is having an undeniable impact on biodiversity, placing renewed urgency on the need to improve climate vulnerability forecasting methods. Identifying populations vulnerable or resilient to climate change is essential for informing effective species management and biodiversity conservation. My research uses genomic, ecological, and climate data to understand species response to climate change through the development of novel methods for forecasting climate vulnerability across a species' range. Advisor: Kristen Ruegg
Eliza Clark	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Agricultural Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: As an evolutionary ecologist, I study how organisms evolve when they encounter new environments, especially in systems of management concern, like invasive species. How fast invasive species spread has been difficult to predict in the past, especially when evolution of species was not considered. But, during invasions, evolution can be very rapid and can greatly impact population growth and spread. I study how an insect that helps control an invasive tree is evolving while spreading into new environments. This will improve our predictions of its rate of spread and make management of other invasive species more effective and sustainable. Advisor: Ruth Hufbauer
Julia Branstrator	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Ph.D. Student, Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources Research Summary: My background in international sustainability studies bridging hospitality, tourism, technology, and innovation, informs an interdisciplinary approach to biological and cultural (biocultural) conservation through tourism. My work is housed within Dr. Cavaliere's Tourism and Conservation Lab within the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources Department of Colorado State University. My philosophy on sustainability leadership centers on multilateral, grassroots organizations building collective decision-making power across disciplines to create an equitable, resilient, and adaptive future. My research takes a standpoint approach, informed by the experiences and adaptations of protected area and gateway community residents, to explore biocultural dynamics through technology use, identities, and affect. Advisor: Christina Cavaliere
Jackie Billotte	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Ph.D. Student, Department of Agricultural Biology Research Summary:My research involves a transdisciplinary approach to the conservation of uncharismatic fauna, namely tarantulas. A major emphasis is on exploring the effectiveness of outreach methods across a broad spectrum of people with a range of views regarding wildlife, and how to build cooperative efforts between citizen-scientists and researchers to solve problems in biodiversity conservation. When it comes to spiders, people usually hate them or love them. This provides a great context for understanding what methods are most effective and versatile across audiences with varying attitudes (or perspectives). The lessons learned can then be adapted to other sustainability and conservation efforts. Advisor: Ruth Hufbauer
Marybeth Arcodia	2022-2023	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: I study climate variability and predictability to understand how particular atmospheric and oceanic conditions in the tropical Indian and Pacific Oceans impact regional weather patterns and extreme events in the United States on subseasonal (two week to two month) time scales. Using a combination of climate models and data science techniques, I explore sources of predictability within our climate system that provide forecasts of opportunity– climate states that result in higher prediction skill– which ultimately lead to more confident climate forecasts. Advisor: Elizabeth Barnes
Andreas Wion	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: Many trees do not produce seeds every year. Rather, populations synchronously erupt in episodic years of abundant seed production followed by one or more years of crop failures. This is called masting, and the boom and bust variability in seed production exerts cascading impacts on tree recruitment, wildlife populations, and disease outbreaks. My research explores the causes and consequences of masting in two dry conifers of the western US, using a network of sites spanning habitats from southern New Mexico to South Dakota. I aim to develop forecasts of masting to aid conservation planning and ecosystem management decisions.
Sarah Whipple	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: Without pollinators, global food systems will collapse. This relationship is traditionally studied from an agricultural perspective, but are native plant-pollinator interactions also in danger? My research focuses on changes in pollinator biodiversity within Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks through the use of citizen science data and natural history collections. Because of their seasonal dependence, pollinators act as a prime indicator species to the changing climate seen within the Rocky Mountains. I hope that my research can engage AND educate the public on the importance of preserving public lands for future pollinator communities that may be impacted by climate change.
Leena Vilonen	2021-2022	Executive Director of the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative Leena Vilonen earned her Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Northwestern University in 2016 and her Ph.D. from Colorado State University in 2022. She is excited to be back at CSU and working with the GSBI. Her research from her Ph.D. aimed to understand how global change drivers, such as drought, impact resistance and resilience of the soil microbial community (bacteria and fungi) in grasslands using amplicon sequencing. Her research largely focused on understanding the legacy effects of drought (responses post-disturbance) and how to define the term legacy effects. Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: Climate models currently predict an intensification of the hydrological cycle, with drought becoming increasingly frequent, widespread, and severe. This predicted intensification of drought has the potential to catastrophically impact the future changing climate if past droughts are any indication of the future response. My research focuses on the impacts of drought on the soil microbiome in grassland systems throughout and after drought. I hope my research will highlight the impacts of drought and allow future policy makers to mitigate these impacts or understand the severity of drought.
Logan Thompson	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Animal Science Research Summary: Ruminant animals, such as beef cattle, help maintain healthy grasslands, healthy soils, and are important to the livelihoods of billions of people across the globe. My research focuses on how the beef industry can produce a high-quality, healthy product, while reducing its impact on the environment and to improve the economic returns of those who raise beef cattle. I also strive to help develop producer tools to improve the sustainability of the beef cattle producers across the state of Colorado.
Fionna Samuels	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Chemistry Research Summary: I study interactions of small molecules called cryoprotectants with living plant cells. Cryoprotectants protect cells from temperatures below freezing when they are cryopreserved. Cryopreservation is used in a wide variety of fields, from fertility clinics to seed banks. Unfortunately, the mechanism of how cryoprotectants actually protect cells from cold is not well understood. Using vibrational microscopy, I took photos of cryoprotectant location within live plant cells, showing that they pool in specific places. This non-uniformity can have a wide range of consequences, the worst being toxic concentrations of cryoprotectants within certain parts of the cell which result in cell death.
Shae Rupinsky	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Student, Department of Political Science Research Summary: Colorado peaches receive the highest price per lb in the country due to their high quality production. However, as demand grows, available orchard land is restricted due to climactic and resource restrictions. Therefore, my research is focused on improving the sustainability of Western Colorado peach orchard management and design. The goal of my program is to determine optimal management strategies that improve resource and input efficiency for peach production, while maximizing fruit quality. Ultimately, the research will outline ideal practices to best utilize solar radiation, water, land, and inputs efficiently to produce more “crop per drop” on less land.
Holly Roth	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Chemistry Research Summary: Due to climate change, modern fire regimes are characterized by more frequent, higher severity fires that occur over a longer burning season. My research focuses on the impacts of such fires on forest soils and watersheds. I am exploring three questions through this research: How does fire temperature and severity impact soil health? How do high severity fires effect water quality? How long after fire does it take for soil to return to pre-burn conditions? Understanding these effects will help us develop targeted forest management strategies that minimize the negative effects of forest fires on soil health and water quality.
Katherine Rocci	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: Soils do so much for society. They help grow our food, clean our water, and even help fight climate change. When we store carbon in the soil, rather than in the air, we reduce the warming effect of climate change. However, soil carbon is at risk from human-induced changes in the environment, as it may be lost under global warming or more widespread droughts. I study the susceptibility of soil carbon to climate change by considering unprotected and protected soil carbon. These two types of soil carbon have different controls, so we expect them to react differently to climate change.
Brianna Rick	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Geosciences Research Summary: I use remote sensing and modeling techniques to map the evolution of glacial lakes in Alaska. Lakes form, grow, and drain as glaciers thin and retreat. Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) occur when a lake dam fails or is overtopped, suddenly releasing a large volume of water. These floods can have devastating impacts on downstream ecosystems, infrastructure, and communities. Understanding how glacial lakes are changing is a critical first step in assessing the hazard potential of individual lakes, and eventually formulating hazard mitigation strategies for local stakeholders.
Mariel Price	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Chemistry Research Summary: My research focus is to develop chemical methods for recycling plastic waste into valuable materials. Specifically, I work on re-designing the chemical building blocks that plastics are made of so that they can be recovered from the plastic product after it is no longer viewed as useful. Current non-chemical methods for recycling plastics often use harsh conditions which damage the structure of the plastic and hinder its potential to be reused. By designing new plastics from which the chemical building blocks can be recovered, my research enables a more sustainable lifecycle for the plastics that our society depends on.
Katie Nigro	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: As temperatures warm, species are expected to migrate to cooler areas to remain within their suitable climate zone. However, trees may not be able to keep pace with accelerated climate warming through migration due to their long generation times and sessile nature. This is exacerbated in areas where current forest cover is preventing future forests from establishing. Therefore, disturbances that cause substantial canopy mortality may provide opportunities for tree species to migrate. My research investigates how climate change and disturbance events like fire and bark beetle outbreaks are changing the distributions of tree species across the intermountain western United States.
Anna Clare Monlezun	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Student, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability Research Summary: To learn more about the [often] paradoxical objectives of food production and natural resource conservation, I am studying collaborative grazing management on Colorado government-owned rangelands. I address these landscapes as complex systems, using a holistic research model to evaluate the pillars of sustainability, ecological-social-economic. The ecological component assesses soil and vegetation health. The socio-economic component explores stakeholder values and perspectives. Finally, I will create a dynamic model illustrating relationships and patterns among these data. This interactive tool will provide a unique means of circling results back to stakeholders to inform adaptive and integrated decision-making through visualization of context-specific management alternatives.
Rehman Lund	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Student, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research Summary: A large amount of water diverted into earthen irrigation canals is lost to seepage. These losses may be overcome by lining the canal with permanent canal liners such as concrete, etc. however, such methods require large capital investments. Alternatively, we propose the use of temporary polymer sealants to reduce canal seepage on an as-needed basis. In the past, we have achieved favorable results from our field experiments assessing synthetic polymers in Colorado, and, Pakistan. Currently, we are evaluating bio-derived alternatives to the synthetic polymers to reduce possible, though rare, agro-environmental damages associated with directly applying polymers to the canal water.
Elodie Le Cornu	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources Research Summary: Philanthropic foundations are influential actors in ocean conservation as funders of various projects, networks and policies around the world and have the potential to create and drive sustainability. Yet there has been little academic research on ocean philanthropy, its practices and its impacts on coastal communities, organizations, and conservation agendas. My doctoral research focuses on understanding these practices and impacts in the context of philanthropic exits using the lens of small-scale fisheries. To that end, I use participatory research methods to integrate the perspectives of donors, grantees and coastal communities and shed light on the legacies of ocean philanthropy.
Shantanu Kumar	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Construction Management and Civil and Environmental Engineering Research Summary: My research pertains to optimizing the sustainability and resilience of transportation projects. Through this research, I plan to answer the question – how we can improve sustainability and resilience in transportation projects while lowering the life cycle cost and associated greenhouse gas emissions, among all possible alternatives (exponential dataset). To visualize this problem, imagine a classical weight balance wherein we have sustainability and resilience on one end and several limitations such as project budget and schedule on the other, as we need to find the right balance between these variables. My research attempts to find alternatives that satisfy these balancing.
Annie Kellner	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: Polar bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea historically spent all year on ice, hunting over the continental shelf north of Alaska. Recently, however, the summer ice has receded beyond the shelf, forcing the bears into a difficult decision: remain as the ice retreats poleward into unproductive waters, or swim to land. It is unclear which decision – if either – will help the bears withstand the pressures of climate change. The purpose of my research is to examine this choice, to better understand what the bears do on land, and contribute to the conservation science of an iconic and imperiled species.
Shaista Karim	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Agricultural Biology Research Summary: The rapid rise in global population has put immense pressure to achieve sustainable crop productivity. By 2050, crop production needs to be double to fulfill food-supply demand. Efforts to increase the production are continuously challenged by environmental factors and pests. Of those pests are continuous threat to food production, their storage, and distribution. Therefore, my research focuses on controlling and curing bacterial disease in sustainable way. Specifically, my research aims in identifying resistant factors in wild plants and translating it into cultivated plants with major focus on potato to bridge the gap between role of soil microbiome for sustainable agriculture.
Amanda Cicchino	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Student, Department of Biology and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: Predicting the effects of climate change on biodiversity has become one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Many species have already been negatively affected by increasing temperatures and extreme disturbance events, and this impact is projected to worsen. Identifying populations that are most vulnerable to climate change is critical to focusing conservation efforts and mitigating anthropogenic influences. My research focuses on uncovering the drivers of variation in traits that promote resilience by integrating physiological, genomic, and developmental data. Ultimately, I aim to identify patterns in vulnerability across the landscape.
Jessa Ata	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Agricultural Biology Research Summary: My research focuses on using genetic information and tools to better understand conifer foliage pathogens that are increasingly emerging due to more frequent warm rain events. These pathogens are causing severe and sustained epidemics in evergreen forests and consequent ecological damage. In my research, I specifically identify relationships among the pathogens to predict patterns of disease spread. I also characterize the pathogen interactions with other microbes living inside host trees to better understand the functions of microbes in healthy versus diseased ecosystems. Finally, I am developing DNA-based tools to rapidly and accurately identify pathogens and diagnose foliage diseases.
Brendon Anthony	2021-2022	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture Research Summary: Colorado peaches receive the highest price per lb in the country due to their high quality production. However, as demand grows, available orchard land is restricted due to climactic and resource restrictions. Therefore, my research is focused on improving the sustainability of Western Colorado peach orchard management and design. The goal of my program is to determine optimal management strategies that improve resource and input efficiency for peach production, while maximizing fruit quality. Ultimately, the research will outline ideal practices to best utilize solar radiation, water, land, and inputs efficiently to produce more “crop per drop” on less land.
Nathan Hahn	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: Conflicts between humans and wildlife driven by rapid urbanization now threaten wildlife populations, ecosystem services, and the food security and health of people living with wildlife. I am interested in how we can use wildlife behavior and emerging technologies to find immediate interventions that reduce risk to people and animals and long-term conservation strategies for coexistence. My current research is focused on identifying how demography, behavior, and landscape factors drive crop-raiding by elephants, and the development of non-lethal tools to reduce conflict in collaboration with local communities and conservation practitioners.
Kristin Davis	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Ph.D. Student , Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: For my Ph.D., I am investigating how 1) bird populations respond to changes in human land use, 2) how human land use affects the ability of an ecosystem to support bird species, and 3) how bird populations respond differently to human-modified land cover (e.g., development, agriculture) within their native and non-native ranges. To address these questions, I will use remotely sensed land use data and bird data collected by citizen scientists from North America and Europe. Results from my investigations will provide guidance on how landscape change and land use policy may impact bird populations across two continents.
Zane Martin	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: I research Earth’s tropical climate using computer simulations of the atmosphere. In particular, I study an important feature of the tropics called the “Madden-Julian oscillation”, which affects the weather over large regions of the tropics every few months. Because of its size, predictable behavior, and global impact, the Madden-Julian oscillation can assist scientists in making accurate forecasts of extreme weather events around the world (like droughts, tropical cyclones, or extreme rainfall) several weeks in advance. My work seeks to improve our understanding of the Madden-Julian oscillation, and use that understanding to better predict its impacts using climate models.
Zachary Labe	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: Broadly, I am interested in a signal-to-noise problem. The signal is climate change. The noise is weather and/or natural variability. My research intends to disentangle the two components to improve our understanding of climate variability and extremes events in a warming world. Specifically, I have concentrated on linkages between Arctic climate change and mid-latitude weather. Using satellite data, historical observations, statistical models, and global climate model simulations, I study how changes in Arctic sea ice and the large-scale atmospheric circulation are connected.
Michael Cheeseman	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: Poor air quality causes millions of premature deaths worldwide. Many regions of the world, however, have few air quality monitors, making it difficult to quantify people's exposure to air pollution. In these locations, we rely on satellite measurements, but it’s difficult to determine the concentrations of pollutants near the surface from a satellite measure of the whole atmosphere. Therefore, my research strives to increase our understanding of the relationship between satellite measures of the whole atmosphere and surface concentrations. We achieve this by working with citizen scientists to deploy novel, low-cost air quality sensors in different regions of the US.
Ali Akherati	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: Air pollution is the fifth leading human health risk factor globally and it has impacts on visibility and climate, directly and indirectly. Wildfire is one of the major contributors to air pollution around the world, especially in the western US. Particle- and gas-phase evolution and compositions from wildfires are poorly understood. My research is to develop a computational model to understand different physicochemical gas- and particle-phase processes which will help us and other scientists to understand the health and climate impacts of wildfire.
Lyndsey Gray	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology Research Summary: What if you could take a pill that made your blood toxic to mosquitoes? That’s exactly what happens when you take ivermectin. When mosquitoes ingest ivermectin in a blood meal, the drug fatally binds to a critical protein channel common in invertebrate nervous systems. My job is to see how this medication can be used to fight one of the deadliest diseases in the world – malaria. Specifically, I’m monitoring wild mosquitoes to see how their populations respond after ivermectin is administered to people. Our goal is to ensure this new weapon against malaria can be used as efficiently as possible.
Clara Tibbetts	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Chemistry Research Summary: I research lithium ion batteries, like in a smartphone. These batteries need lithium to move back and forth during charging. Eventually batteries die, and one reason is the liquid inside breaks down. The liquid breakdown forms a layer. This layer can form like a brick wall, letting nothing through. Ideally though the layer forms more like a gated fence that only lithium has the key to. Therefore, lithium can move back and forth, giving the battery a longer life. Understanding why different layers form is important. Therefore, I am developing a technique with lasers to watch liquids breakdown in batteries.
Alexander Mauro	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: Climate change is melting the ice caps, raising sea levels, and putting land underwater. But what is often overlooked in this process is an increase in the salinity of estuaries and coastal rivers. Saltier coasts are going to pose a challenge for aquatic life and the people who depend on that life for their livelihood. I research how fish will respond to such a challenge by integrating genetics, physiology, and ecology. My research will help us better understand the impact of salinity increases on biodiversity, the people who depend on coastal fish, and adaptation in nature.
Danielle Lin Hunter	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: I study how scientists communicate about, perceive, and implement citizen science. Citizen science is any way that members of the public participate in the scientific process. My research specifically focuses on how scientists communicate about and perceive the tasks that volunteers perform. In turn I then look at how this affects the way that they make decisions about how to implement citizen science projects. Understanding how these decisions are made is important because it affects both outcomes for science like the provision of quality data and those for volunteers like increased scientific literacy.
Pascal Jundt	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Physics Research Summary: I shine lasers on solar cells to learn about them. At CSU, we are working to improve a particular solar cell technology called cadmium telluride. The aforementioned laser measurement (called time-resolved photoluminescence) is a useful tool for identifying problem areas within the cell structure, or for identifying good characteristics of a cell even if the overall performance is poor. This information can help focus research on the areas which need improvement. My research involves developing advanced measurement techniques to extract even more useful information, and uses modeling to better understand how to interpret results, which can be quite challenging.
Cassidy Jackson	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Chemistry Research Summary: My research focuses on using molecular-level building blocks to design quantum computers. I study molecules featuring an unpaired electron, which can be used as the quantum bit (qubit). Bits in a classical computer can exist as “0” or “1”, but qubits can exist as “0” and “1” and both simultaneously. This state is called a superposition and is the powerhouse of quantum computation. However, the superposition state is difficult to control, and collapses quickly. Upon collapse, all information is lost before useful calculations can be performed. I investigate what environmental aspects of molecular magnetic complexes engender long superposition lifetimes.
Lauren Hoskovec	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Ph.D. Student, Department of Statistics Research Summary: My research involves developing statistical methods for estimating health risks associated with exposure to mixtures of environmental pollutants. Specifically, I am working on developing a model to identify microenvironments such as home or work and associated events such as cooking or smoking where exposures to environmental pollutants may vary. I plan on using my new model to understand personal exposures throughout a typical workday and commute in a local area such as Fort Collins. My research also includes developing theoretically justified ways of imputing missing data to improve estimates and inference.
Carrie Chennault	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Statistics Research Summary: My research uses a feminist and social justice lens to examine the politics of environmental sustainability. I take an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on feminist, queer, and black geographies and political ecology to examine power and inequality. Using these frameworks, I study food and environmental justice, sustainable agriculture, spatial inequities in urban ecology, and community engagement. Mixed methods guide my research, including feminist, ethnographic, participatory/community-engagement, and data visualization. Through an interdisciplinary, mixed methods approach, my work reveals the multiple, interacting scales of environmental sustainability – the interconnections between policies, social structures, and people's everyday experiences of the environment in their communities.
Rebecca Cheek	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: We recognize organisms possess physical traits that help them survive. These traits, encoded by DNA, are continuously shaped by evolution to allow populations of organisms to adapt to their local environments. My research seeks to understand the genetic mechanisms that drive and maintain adaptive traits through the lens of an isolated yet diverse bird population exhibiting patterns of adaptive divergence on a small island. This research is critical, as it demonstrates that conservation biologists must focus efforts on smaller spatial scales to preserve the full range of evolutionary histories needed for wildlife populations to persist in future environments.
Erin Boedicker	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Chemistry Research Summary: I study the behavior of particulate matter, which are all the microscopic solid and liquid particles suspended in our air, in both indoor and outdoor environments. These particles have broad impacts on human health and the heating and cooling of our atmosphere. I investigate what happens to these particles after they have been created and identify how they are transported through and removed from an environment. Understanding these processes will help us develop targeted solutions that can reduce the effects of particulate matter on our environment.
James Hale	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Sociology Research Summary: My research is concerned with how groups work to improve areas related to food and environmental justice, especially as those issues relate to talking across difference, overcoming biases, and working through entrenched social, political, and economic inequities. This primarily involves studying and mapping underlying socio-cultural values, norms, identities, and practices; a methodological technique that helps make visible elements that, while hugely consequential, too often are ignored and left to fester. This blind spot in turn undermines otherwise well-intentioned project aims at alleviating injustices and disparities.
Laura van der Pol	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Ph.D. Student, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, and Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory Research Summary: Agriculture is both part of a problem and solution to achieving sustainable civilization; my research focuses on ways to make how we grow our food part of the solution. I study how integrating plants that can fix nitrogen from the air (called legumes) into grain systems can enhance soil fertility and sequester carbon from the atmosphere, thus improving our ability to grow food and mitigate climate change. One novel aspect of my work is incorporating a recently domesticated perennial grain Kernza into my research, as little is known about this crop’s capacity to sequester soil carbon.
Shelby McClelland	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: My research is driven by one primary question: can we store more carbon than we emit? As an agroecosystem ecologist, my work centers on identifying the synergies and tradeoffs between environmental and food security goals associated with management choices in our food systems. I rely upon my background in biogeochemistry, ecosystem ecology, and soil science to answer outstanding scientific questions at the farm, landscape, and national scales related to natural climate solutions. Through a combination of field and modelling approaches, I seek to understand how practices like cover cropping, composting, and grazing impact soil health and net greenhouse gas emissions.
Janak Joshi	2020-2021	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2020-2021 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture Research Summary: My research focuses on identifying the resistance against bacterial soft rot disease of potato. The disease have no curative measures and no resistance available in commercial potatoes. Fortunately, wild potato species were found to have resistance characteristics against the disease. Therefore, I am using chemistry and molecular biology tools to identify the factors that contribute to the resistance. The findings will then be transferred into commercial potatoes to achieve soft rot resistant potatoes.
Jasmine Bruno	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Ph.D. Student, Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship Research Summary:Rangeland social-ecological systems in Northeastern (NE) Colorado are undergoing linked land-use, livelihood, and identity transitions. While changes in land cover have been well studied empirically, multi-scale, multi-level research on the mechanisms and impacts of land use and land cover change is limited. To inform appropriate land use policies, research is needed to understand the drivers and impacts of change in context. To address this need, I apply mixed-methods to investigate the social-ecological change in NE Colorado by examining the interrelationships between shifting rancher identities and livelihoods, associated land use transitions, and their social and ecological causes and consequences.
Chris Vennum	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Ph.D. Student, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary: The green revolution of the mid-20th century provided technological advances in agricultural that supported and allowed for a dramatic increase in the human population. The global human population is expected to reach 9.8 billion by 2050 and will require even more land converted to agricultural. This transformation will come at a cost to natural ecosystems and the wildlife. My research focus on the demography and trajectories of wildlife populations utilizing agricultural habitats, specifically migratory birds. I’m interested in how certain crop types influence not only where birds’ nests but how their survival, reproductive efforts, and long-term use is influenced.
Hailey Summers	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Ph.D. Student, Department of Mechanical Engineering Research Summary: My research is focused on quantifying the sustainability of agriculture, bioprocessing and food-related systems through life cycle and techno-economic analyses. I am interested in understanding environmental and economic trade-offs of emerging technologies as well as improving the process efficiency of existing product pathways and supply chains. Specifically, I am looking at quantifying the environmental impact and associated economics of cannabis cultivation, new crop integration to the arid Southwestern United States and local versus distributed food systems for urban cities. With this work, I hope to better inform the general public and policy makers such that future decisions can be approached sustainably.
Emily Stuchiner	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a greenhouse gas 300x more potent than CO2 and it is dramatically increasing in the atmosphere due to anthropogenic causes. When humans over-fertilize soils with nitrogen (N), microbes consume the excess N and emit N2O as a byproduct. It is challenging to manage N2O emissions because microbes respire N2O in many different ways. My research aims to improve understanding of the diverse ways that microbes emit N2O, and how soil characteristics influence N2O production pathways. Almost 50% of soil N2O emissions come from agriculture, and humanity’s reliance on agroecosystems necessitates developing strategies for controlling N2O emissions.
Neeta Soni	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Bioagricultural Sciences and Pest Management Research Summary: My research projects are focused on understanding weed biology and herbicide resistance to inform management decisions. I am working on identifying the potential to use a non-herbicidal weed control method at harvest for the Central Great Plains winter wheat cropping systems. Additionally, I am working to provide land managers quick classification tools to distinguish between invasive and native common reed plants. I am currently working with kochia which is one of the most problematic western weeds. I am studying the herbicide resistance mechanism, specifically to the dicamba herbicide (a.k.a. EngeniaTM) to develop a better management approach.
Jenna Parker	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: I study the health of wild orphan African elephants. To do this, I repeatedly collected dung samples from about 20 wild orphan elephants, and also from about 20 wild non-orphan elephants of the same age that live in the same area, for over a year. I am measuring stress hormones, worm infection, and gut bacteria of each elephant using these dung samples. If orphans have higher levels of stress hormones, more worms, and more dangerous bacterial species in their gut than non-orphans, it will show that they are in worse health than non-orphans.
Kristopher Parker	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Environmental & Radiological Health Sciences Research Summary: My research explores the relationship between diet and disease through a lens focused on understanding the intricate interplay between food components, metabolism, and gut microbes. I am currently investigating the composition of gut microbiota alongside the profile of products (metabolites) derived from host and microbial metabolism of rice bran: a globally accessible, underutilized byproduct of rice milling. Rice bran is rich in fibers, fatty acids, B and E vitamins, and contains a suite of bioactive prebiotics and phytochemicals. Our research has revealed that consumption of heat-stabilized rice bran provides valuable nutrition, reduces gut pathogens, and confers protection from chronic disease.
Hyeyoon Park	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science Research Summary: My research focuses on the question of how China as an emerging power influences global environmental norm development processes. I am examining the role of Chinese actors particularly in transnational governance initiatives targeting environmental and social responsibility in the extractive sector. Transparency is a prominent norm in global extractives governance that requires extractive companies to disclose information on their environmental and social impacts. My dissertation research explores transparency norm development as a two-way socialization process where China is both a norm-taker (adopts existing norms) and a norm-maker (shapes/re-shapes norms).
Tyler Ozvat	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Ph.D. Student, Department of Chemistry Research Summary: My research focuses on rare-earth elements and my goal is to harness their exceptional magnetic properties to control chemical reactions. Currently, I am building a conceptual model to prove this concept by synthesizing strong magnetic molecules with rare-earth ions that can control substrates with unpaired electrons, such as radicals. Specifically, it is my aim to study the magnetic interactions between each component and the relative influence of rare-earth ions on radical chemical reactions. Knowledge of these mechanisms is fundamentally lacking, and it is my goal to understand how magnetism in small molecules can be used to facilitate new chemistry.
Kelvin Mulungu	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Ph.D. Student, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics Research Summary: In developing countries, rural households depend on agriculture and natural resource exploitation for their income, food, and nutrition. However, with prevalent climate shocks in terms of droughts or floods, farming becomes a precarious activity. The goal of my study is to understand the role played by forest extraction in insuring nutrition when there is a weather shock given its multiple uses (extraction of wild foods, and timber). In Africa, where farmers lack formal safety nets that lessen the impact of weather-related catastrophes, understanding the role that communal natural resources play is vital to protecting livelihoods and conservation of these resources.
Jakob Lindaas	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: My research aims to understand what chemical compounds are in wildfire smoke, how they change as the smoke travels downwind, and what effects these chemicals have on humans and ecosystems when wildfire smoke impacts them. Specifically, I study ammonia and other reactive nitrogen compounds which play an important role in creating more particles and in creating ozone, which are both harmful to humans. To do this I was part of a recent field project that put lab equipment on a plane and used this flying laboratory to sample smoke all across the western US.
Jocelyn Lavallee	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory Research Summary: Soils contain vast amounts of carbon and nutrients that contribute to plant growth and regulate exchange of greenhouse gases with our atmosphere. I study how carbon and nutrients move through soils, and the factors that speed up or slow down that cycling. I look at ways to increase stores of soil nutrients and carbon to improve soil health and help mitigate climate change. I use a combination of field and laboratory experiments, and modeling to better understand how soils respond to things like farm management practices, warming, and drought so that we can better predict soil responses in the future.
Courtland Kelly	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: My work focuses on soil health, and how to build or maintain it with different farm management practices. Soils are a critical piece to the sustainability of our food production systems, and many conventional practices degrade soil functioning, which has negative impacts on yield, biodiversity and environmental quality. In my research, I assess how increasing plant and animal diversity in cropping systems changes soil properties important for yield and the environment.
Rina Hauptfeld	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Ph.D. Student, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: My research informs the sustainable and equitable management of natural resources by focusing on capacity building tools for community based natural resource management. My PhD research looks at how efforts intended to empower locals and build capacity for sustainable natural resource management are impacted by misalignments of priorities at different scales. I investigate how the underlying western, scientific conceptualization and implementation of participatory monitoring may constrain the applicability and sustainability of efforts to support local priorities, such as food security and democratization. My dissertation focuses on marine protected areas co-managed by semi-literate fishermen in the Central Visayas, Philippines.
Jemma Fadum	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Ph.D. Student, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: Aquaculture is a rapidly expanding industry with the potential to efficiently provide a protein source for a growing global population while bolstering local economies. However, if mismanaged, aquaculture can cause irreparable damage to its host lake. I am interested in how aquaculture impacts the biogeochemistry of lakes with the goal of understanding how an aquaculture operation can maximize its production while still practicing lake stewardship. My research focuses on Lake Yojoa in Honduras where 77,000 kg of Tilapia are produced per day. Using this model system, I am looking at how aquaculture is driving algal blooms and diminished water clarity.
Wayne Chuang	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: I am investigating how air pollution is formed from gases and particles that are released around us--from trees and flowers to cars and trucks. Some of these gases are organic, or containing carbon atoms, and they can react in the air to form larger organic species. Because of their size, they condense from a gas to a particle, like how water condenses on a glass. These particles have negative effects on our cardiovascular and respiratory health and have effects on Earth’s climate. By studying how particles are formed, I can better understand how to decrease air pollution.
Cibi Vishnu Chinnasamy	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Urban Water Systems Research Summary: Water is intimately connected with the food and energy systems in the cities. However, climate change combined with the effects of population growth and increase in water demand, puts a lot of cities around the world under a huge challenge to find fresh water supplies. I study different hydro-geographic, climatic and socio-economic forces that influence end water use across major cities in the contiguous U.S.A. Through my research I strive to identify and provide a range of pathways, tying together policies, engineering solutions and socio-economic factors, to sustainably manage the contemporary precious resource of humanity, water.
Molly Butler	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology Research Summary: I study how dengue, a tropical virus, makes people sick. Dengue virus, like all viruses, completely depends on the cell that it infects in order to replicate. When dengue virus infects a cell, we know that it can change the cell’s metabolism - the way the cell uses nutrients. My job is to study how dengue virus changes metabolism and how we can stop those changes from happening. If we can understand how dengue virus changes the cells that it infects, we can find better ways to prevent or treat infection.
Kelsey Bilsback	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: Nearly half the world’s population uses inefficient cookstoves that burn solid fuels (e.g., wood, charcoal, coal) to cook their meals and heat their homes. About 3 million people die prematurely every year from exposure to air pollution from cookstoves. I use a global atmospheric chemistry model to study how air pollution from cookstoves affects health and climate. Currently, I am investigating an energy transition (coal to electricity) in northern China, which will be implemented by 2020. I am modeling how the transition will impact the health of people in the region and local and global climate.
Hannah Berry	2019-2020	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2019-2020 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Bioagricultural Sciences and Pest Management & Department of Cell and Molecular Biology Research Summary: Defense responses to pathogens are energetically costly to plants. In many plant species, constitutive and systemic activation of defenses by chemical or genetic approaches leads to reduced losses to disease, but also frequently to stunted growth and reduced seed yield. I use plant genetics to understand how the different plant hormones naturally orchestrate the balance between growth and defense in plants, with the goal of developing advanced crops with high yield and high resistance to pathogens, for use in sustainable agricultural systems.
Brandon Wolding	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Ph.D. Student, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: Look at any photo of Earth taken from space, and one of the first things you may notice is that clouds cover a large portion of the Earth’s surface. You may also notice that the clouds are not randomly scattered, but instead tend to cluster together. The tendency of clouds to gather near each other affects the weather that we experience, as well as the climate of our planet. My research is focused on understanding why clouds like to cluster together, and how this may impact the Earth’s changing climate.
Carlie Trott	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Psychology Research Summary: Recent initiatives to foster the engagement of diverse constituencies in climate change action have emphasized the transformative potential of children and youth as agents of sustainable change within their families and communities. However, in the U.S., young people face a number of social, cultural, political, and educational barriers to their active engagement with climate change. As an applied social psychologist, my research aims to simultaneously explore and expand youth agency to carry out personal and collaborative climate change action. In a more general sense, my research explores the intersection of science education, social justice, and civic and political engagement.
Xoco Shinbrot	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Ph.D. Student, Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources Research Summary: International development programs are designed to be “win-win” – improving both environmental and social factors – however many of the social outcomes such as environmental knowledge, civic engagement, and social networks are not evaluated. These social outcomes have feedbacks for resilience to climate change. I examine community-based water monitoring (CBWM), which trains community members to collect and analyze water quality, and payment for watershed services (PSW) which pays landowners for forest conservation to improve water quality. Looking at participation in these two programs, this research gets at how development programs can be designed and implemented to enhance social outcomes and adaptive capacity.
Alisha Shah	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology Research Summary: Understanding how living organisms respond to a changing climate is a fundamental challenge to biologists. Tolerance to heat is one practical way to measure an organism's response to climate warming. I measure heat tolerance in aquatic insects found in tropical and temperate streams to find which species are most sensitive to increasing temperatures. Theory suggests that tropical organisms may be considerably more vulnerable to warming than temperate organisms. I test this theory to predict subsequent changes in insect communities, and whether such changes will be more severe in tropical or temperate stream insect communities.
Derek Schook	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship Research Summary: I use cottonwood trees to understand floodplain land surface processes and river discharge histories. Cottonwood age is a proxy for the age of the underlying land surface, and tree age distributions reveal rates of river migration. Therefore, we can compare recent changes to the centuries of changes that occurred before the modern era of intense human modification of river corridors, watersheds, and the atmosphere. Additionally, I use dendrochronology (tree ring science) to reconstruct river flows to gain a long-term perspective on the status of these ecosystems in the modern world.
Steven Rosenzweig	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Ph.D. Student, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences Research Summary: I study the social and ecological dimensions of cropping system intensification in semi-arid regions, which is the practice of reducing periods in a crop rotation when a crop is not being grown. Intensification is a practice that has the potential to prevent soil erosion, build soil health, reduce chemical inputs, grow more food, and boost farmer incomes and rural economies. I am conducting interviews with farmers to examine the socioeconomic and political barriers preventing adoption of intensified crop rotations, and taking soil samples to assess the effects of intensification on soil physical and biological properties related to resilience to drought.
Isabella Oleksy	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Ph.D. Student, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability Research Summary: Over the last several decades, lakes show a warming trend globally due to changes in temperature and reduced cloud cover. Even the most remote lakes, such as mountain lakes in the Rocky Mountains, are not immune to stressors caused by humans. I am interested in how atmospheric deposition of pollutants (nitrogen and phosphorus) coupled with warming is changing the way that alpine lakes cycle nutrients internally, as well as how these food webs are changing. Since alpine lakes are situated at the very beginnings of catchments, how they react to a changing climate can have downstream implications.
Brittany Mosher	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary: Amphibians worldwide are declining at unprecedented rates. An invasive fungus is one culprit that is doing damage in the Rocky Mountains. Though once common in Colorado, the state-endangered boreal toad has disappeared from many high-elevation wetlands coincident with the arrival of the fungus. My research identifies the factors that make some boreal toad populations more susceptible to disease than others, and also investigates how to detect the fungus where amphibians no longer exist. My work helps managers at Rocky Mountain National Park and beyond make smart decisions as they try to restore imperiled amphibian populations.
Stacy Lischka	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary: Expanding human development increases the ways humans and wildlife interact. Interactions sometimes lead to conflicts, which cause consequences ranging from decreased human tolerance for wildlife to killing conflict-causing animals. Conflicts are caused by wildlife and human behaviors, and require an understanding of both to identify solutions. I have applied an interdisciplinary framework to understand the role of human and animal behavior in human-wildlife conflict, suggesting management actions that limit conflicts, increase tolerance for wildlife, and conserve populations. I study human-wildlife coexistence in the context of human-black bear conflict by exploring social and ecological factors that affect the risk of conflict.
Katherine Lininger	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Geosciences Research Summary: Understanding the global carbon cycle is important for fully understanding climate change. One aspect of the carbon cycle that isn’t well studied is how much carbon is stored in rivers and floodplains, particularly in the high latitudes where permafrost is melting due to climate change. As rivers transport sediment and organic matter, they deposit those materials in floodplains, storing carbon. There may be more carbon stored in floodplains than we previously thought, and physical differences between river systems influence the storage and fluxes of carbon. I am investigating floodplain carbon dynamics in the central Yukon River basin in interior Alaska.
Anita Kuepper	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Ph.D. Student, Department of Bioagricultural Sciences and Management Research Summary: My research focuses on the evolution of herbicide resistance in agricultural weeds. Specifically, I am investigating the mechanism of resistance in Indian hedge mustard and Palmer amaranth, both species which cause yield reductions due to crop competition. Using genetic and molecular techniques, my projects aim to find candidate genes that are involved in conferring herbicide resistance. This has the goal to develop diagnostic tools for the field, find novel traits for crop tolerance and inhibitors for resistance to ultimately optimize weed management practices and minimize economic losses for farmers. This will help secure food production for a growing world population.
Ajit Karna	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology Research Summary: My PhD research involve understanding the determinants of mosquito-borne diseases in Nepal, and how animal models can relate to disease in humans. It includes mapping the environmental factors, animal husbandry practices, and experimentally infecting ecologically relevant animals. In Nepal, people live in a close interface with livestock and rice fields, and create an environment suitable for mosquitoes to breed, feed and transmit microbes. I am integrating human knowledge, attitude and practice data, mosquito data, environmental temperature, rainfall data to be able to understand and predict disease outbreak. I am also analyzing to see appropriate communication channels to bring public awareness.
Aaron Hrozencik	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Ph.D. Student, Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics Research Summary: My dissertation research involves analyzing the impacts of managing scarce natural resources with differing policy instruments. In particular, I study the economics of agricultural groundwater use in the Republican River Basin of Colorado. I utilize the modeling tools of microeconomics, agronomy and hydrology to investigate how differing conservation policies determine groundwater use behavior and agricultural profits. This integrated model simulates aquifer response to groundwater extraction to capture how groundwater use this year affects groundwater availability in future years. My dissertation research aims to use model results to inform stakeholders in eastern Colorado of the economic tradeoffs of differing conservation policies.
Rebekah Gullberg	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Ph.D Student, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology Research Summary: Climate change has contributed to increased emergence of infectious diseases worldwide. Mosquito-born viruses, such as Dengue and recently Zika virus, are particularly concerning with no effective treatments or vaccines. Viruses are parasites that depend on a cell for their energy and change the cell’s metabolism to accommodate their needs. My research focuses on these metabolic changes and how Dengue virus overtakes the cell’s machinery to complete its life cycle. Many of these changes are also characteristic of cancer and we have means to control them. By repurposing these treatments we may be able to better control these devastating infections.
Stacy Endriss	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Ph.D Candidate, Department of Bioagricultural Science and Pest Management Research Summary: In today’s world of rapid global change, plants are constantly on the move. When plants are brought to new places, they also often interact with new species, especially insects. However, whether, and if so how, plants can adapt to sudden shifts in insect communities remains unclear. To address this knowledge gap, I use an introduced plant to ask how changes in communities of plant-eating insects and insect pollinators shape a plant's ecology and evolution. This research is important because it informs sustainable management of the food plants we care about, as well as the weeds we want to protect against.
Stacey Elmore	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary: There are seven genetically different types of Rabies Virus in the US, each one surviving best in a certain wildlife species. The raccoon variant infects raccoons and skunks in the eastern US and costs the government and taxpayers a lot of money every year. The most expensive aspects of raccoon rabies are the costs of vaccinating people after they experience an animal bite and the vaccination of raccoons throughout the eastern US. The USDA and other scientists from around the world are cooperating to eliminate this variant from the US. My job is to use computer simulations to determine how this can be best accomplished using different combinations of management tools, such as more intense vaccination.
Drew Bennett	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2016-2017 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary: Trained broadly as a geographer, I integrate insights from social and physical sciences to better understand the social and ecological outcomes of market-based approaches to environmental conservation. Currently I am researching ways to engage private landowners, such as farmer and ranchers, in conservation efforts. In particular, I am interested in understanding conservation professionals’ knowledge and opinions of a range of strategies for engaging landowners to better understand the different contexts in which these strategies are most viable. The results of this research will be used to target outreach efforts and enhance the technical capacity of conservationists.
Zachary Wurtzebach	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Ph.D Student, Department of Rangeland and Forest Stewardship Research Summary: I conduct research on strategies for effectively integrating scientific information into natural resource planning and management. Specifically, I am interested in policies and administrative practices for public land management agencies that support relevant, cost effective, and scientifically credible ecological monitoring programs, and facilitate the integration of scientific information into planning and management decision making across local and regional scales. This requires careful attention to organizational structures and processes that support data collection, analysis, collaboration, and effective communication strategies.
Amy Sheflin	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition Research Summary: True food security extends beyond access to adequate food and includes supplying nutrition necessary for a healthy and active life. As such, food security is linked closely to human health and involves reducing chronic diseases associated with poor quality nutrition. My research addresses this problem by investigating ways that food affects gut microbiota and exploring roles gut microbiota play in disease prevention. By understanding these mechanisms, better access to crops that prevent disease can be developed. Ultimately, this research increases provision of food security through highly targeted nutrition, which enables disease prevention with available foods.
Patricia Salerno	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Biology Research Summary: My research focuses on using genetic data to understand evolutionary histories of organisms within a geographic context. I aim to elucidate origins and causes of biodiversity, and genetically characterize populations of threatened vertebrates to better inform conservation strategies. During my PhD and postdoctoral work, I have studied the evolutionary history of frogs on sky islands, the effect of drastic landscapes and climates on population connectivity of threatened frogs, the effect of different habitats types on local adaptation of endemic island birds, and the effect of the 2013 Colorado floods on the genetic connectivity and persistence of stream insects.
Aaron Piña	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: I study the atmospheric transport of nitrogen, which is harmful to alpine ecosystems, from the Colorado Front Range into Rocky Mountain National Park. In collaboration with a professor in atmospheric science, I developed an early warning system to mitigate nitrogen emissions from cattle feedlots in eastern Colorado. I am currently analyzing impacts from the early warning system while researching the social-ecological impacts of the early warning system on the management of feedlot operations.
Noelle Noyes	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Clinical Sciences Research Summary: My research focuses on improving our understanding of antibiotic resistance in livestock production, with the ultimate goal of protecting public health. We track antibiotic resistance throughout the food production system, trying to determine whether specific production practices (including use of antibiotics) foster or mitigate the development of antibiotic resistance. To this end, we have sampled cattle and their waste products in feedlots and slaughterhouses, and are currently expanding this work to swine and poultry. Using cutting-edge DNA sequencing methods on the collected samples, we hope to better understand how resistance is disseminated within and from these systems.
Adrian Monroe	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability Research Summary: Agricultural intensification, primarily through heavy use of fertilizer and pesticides, has yielded substantial increases in food production, yet this has also come at an environmental cost, reducing biodiversity and increasing non-point source pollution. My dissertation work demonstrated that native warm-season grasses can be a sustainable alternative to exotic forages by reducing fertilizer inputs, increasing cattle gain, and providing more nesting opportunities for grassland birds. As a postdoctoral fellow I am examining landscape-scale responses of sage-grouse populations to grazing management on public lands, including interactions between the timing and intensity of grazing and precipitation.
Dylan Harrison-Atlas	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary: It is well known that fish need water to survive. Fish also need food, habitat, and a suitable climate. I study how these factors jointly influence where fish species occur. A broader goal of my research is to understand which species are most sensitive to climate change and where they will be at greatest risk to increasing temperatures.
Nathan Grubaugh	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology Research Summary: Climate change and human factors, such as land use and globalization, continue to facilitate the emergence of new viruses. I am interested in detecting new viruses before they become a global threat and the ecological factors that direct virus evolution. My research involves a combination of field work, laboratory experimentation, and computation biology. First, I am collecting human blood-fed mosquitoes to detect pathogens from remote areas in West Africa. In the lab, I am examining how different interactions of mosquitoes and birds can impact West Nile virus evolution and alter the outcome of infection.
Shifra Goldenberg	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary: Wildlife harvest is often thought of in terms of numbers lost, but harvest may have behavioral consequences that contribute to population status. African elephants have experienced a recent resurgence in ivory poaching directed toward older individuals for their larger tusks. The ability of young females to withstand the loss of older matriarchs, which serve as information centers, is unknown. Integrating demographic, movement, and social network approaches, I am investigating the behavioral strategies of females from disrupted families and the effects of behavior on survival and reproduction, with implications for less accessible populations and other long-lived species facing anthropogenic threat.
Tandra Fraser	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Biology Research Summary: Tandra Fraser was the Executive Director of Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative from 2014-2016 based at the School. She is a soil molecular biologist interested in the response of soil microbes to anthropogenic-induced changes. Her research has focused on linking soil bacterial communities to metabolic functions for biochemical cycling of phosphorus in agricultural and grassland soils of the Northern Great Plains. Tandra has worked with researchers, community groups and farmers across Canada. After completing a M.Sc. in soil science at the University of Saskatchewan, she spent a year working with farmers in Honduras on a project to improve nutrient management on remote hillside farms. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Guelph in 2015.
John Field	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Mechanical Engineering Research Summary: My research involves quantitative sustainability analysis and lifecycle assessment, using ecosystem models to determine the best way to produce non-food crops for large-scale biofuel production. Perennial grasses such as switchgrass are promising low-impact feedstock crops, but there is no consensus about where they could best be integrated into existing agricultural landscapes or how they should be managed. My research involves conducting large numbers of landscape-scale DayCent ecosystem model simulations, and then determining optimal landscape designs that yield the greatest amount of biofuel feedstock material at lowest cost and lowest environmental impact.
Ashley Evanoski-Cole	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: I am interested in understanding how current air pollution issues are impacting our country’s national parks. One project I am currently involved in is assessing the impacts of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” on the air quality in national parks in the Bakken oil formation region in North Dakota and Montana. As an atmospheric chemist, I make measurements of different chemical compounds in the air and determine the sources of these air pollutants. These measurements can then be used to determine air quality impacts on human health and climate change.
Adam Dillon	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary: For thousands of years, the endemic Island fox roamed the northern California Channel Islands free from predators, but in the 1990’s golden eagles became established and caused a 95% decline in the fox population. The causes of golden eagle establishment were multiple, ranging from local avian extinction due to DDT and human-aided establishment of invasive species. This decline initiated an Island fox recovery project consisting of captive fox breeding; golden eagle, pig and sheep removal; and bald eagle reintroduction. My research focuses on estimating the population trend of foxes following the removal of non-native vertebrates to determine their recovery status.
Ellen Daugherty	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Chemistry Research Summary: The complexity of large- and small-scale processes controlling global climate makes predicting future trends extremely difficult. My research aims to better understand some of the small-scale processes involved in carbon cycling, a major factor in global climate change. I examine how iron interacts with organic carbon compounds created by the decomposition of plants, animals, and microbes. These interactions can contribute to carbon sequestration in soil and water and may be sensitive to temperature changes. Thus, it is important to understand the interactions between iron and carbon compounds and how these might contribute to the acceleration or deceleration of climate change.
Renee Curry	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Ph.D. Student, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: Severe, prolonged droughts are predicted to occur more frequently due to global climate change. Droughts cause a variety of economic, social and environmental stresses. My research uses an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates both meteorological and ecological data into a computer model to see how well this model can predict the impacts of drought on the productivity (plant growth) of grasslands and crops in the U.S. Great Plains. The effects of drought on plants and soils directly impact human and wildlife populations; therefore, the results from this study could be used by ranchers and farmers to help with future droughts.
Amber Childress-Runyon	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Ph.D. Student, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability Research Summary: My research focuses on the interactions and feedbacks between ecological and social systems, specifically how people respond and adapt to environmental changes and how their responses impact or change ecosystems. I am currently investigating water management in the South Platte River Basin of Colorado and how water providers have adapted to droughts in the past. I hope it will lead to a better understanding of barriers and opportunities to adapt to future change and reduce vulnerabilities and help determine feasible options for adapting existing management strategies to adjust to varying water availability.
Ana Bossa	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Ph.D. Student, Department of Bioagricultural Sciences and Pest Management Research Summary: Rice is essential for food security, providing income and food for half of the world’s population. Bacterial diseases are major constraints to rice yield worldwide. Planting resistant varieties is the most effective and sustainable way to control them. My research project is aimed at identifying regions in the rice genome that confer resistance against three devastating bacterial pathogens in Africa and Latin America. The rice varieties studied will facilitate the use of identified resistant sources in breeding programs. My project is a collaboration involving CSU, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).
Brittany Bloodhart	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: I study the psychological processes of individuals when thinking about social and environmental injustice (What makes people deny climate change? What makes people DO something about climate change?). Most of my research looks at barriers to people getting involved in environmental issues, including feelings such as guilt or fear, self-focused vs. other-focused moral values, beliefs about rights and entitlement, and being psychologically distant from the negative impacts of climate change. Having a women’s studies focus, I look at both how environmental issues are also gender issues, and how people’s thinking about sexism (or racism, classism, etc.) parallels their thinking about the environment.
Mike Angstadt	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science Research Summary: My research examines the role that court structures play in shaping environmental outcomes. Specifically, I explore specialized environmental courts and tribunals (“ECTs”). ECTs are rapidly emerging in many developing countries on the premise that better environmental outcomes will result from judiciaries possessing procedures and personnel tailored to resolving complex environmental questions. In evaluating ECTs, my research will examine two related questions. First, I examine the causes and mechanisms for ECTs’ global proliferation. Second, I will undertake an initial exploration of ECT efficacy by developing a framework to compare environmental outcomes resulting from ECT orders to those issuing from generalist courts.
Charlotte Alster	2015-2016	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2015-2016 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology Research Summary: My research aims to understand how microbial communities in soil vary in their response to changes in temperature and what impact this has on global carbon modeling. Soil microorganisms play a critical role in ecosystems, breaking down leaf litter and converting nutrients into plant accessible forms. In the process of carrying out these ecosystem functions, microbes respire, producing an order of magnitude more CO2 than is released by human sources. Soils contain four times more carbon than the atmosphere; because respiration rates often increase with temperature, atmospheric carbon contributed by soil requires full inclusion in any climate change discussion.
Kevin Wilcox	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology Research Summary: Kevin is a Ph.D. candidate who focuses on climate change effects on grasslands. Although predictions consistently point towards a world with altered total rainfall amounts which will come in bigger storms with longer dry periods in between, these predictions vary substantially among local regions. Additionally, the magnitude (i.e., sensitivity) with which each region will respond to these changes in precipitation regimes will vary as well. His research focuses on sensitivity patterns of productivity (i.e., how much grass growth will occur in an entire grassland in a year) across multiple grasslands, across multiple drivers (rainfall amount vs rainfall pattern), and across multiple plant assemblages within a grassland. His future research will focus on incorporating these patterns into current ecosystem models.
Tungalag Ulambayar	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship Research Summary: Tungaa's research contributes to addressing rangeland degradation and poverty of herders in Mongolia. Herders are carriers of nomadic culture, the identity and the source of pride for Mongols. They comprise 30% of the labor force, 40% of voters, and produce 18% of GDP. Herders’ livelihood is highly dependent on rangeland resources. Community-based rangeland management or CBRM is sought to be an alternative option that encourages participation of herders in resource management. However, her results show that herders need better access to information, training, empowered leadership, knowledge exchange, and cooperation. Once these conditions are met, there will be more effective resource management institutions that reduce burdens of local government. If successful, CBRM will contribute to the improvement of resource condition and herders’ well-being through promoting democracy and equal access to resources.
Jennifer Tobin-Gurley	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Sociology Research Summary: Jennifer is the Director of Research and Engagement for the Center for Disaster and Risk Analysis and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Colorado State University (CSU). Jennifer’s research focuses on learning about the experiences of underprivileged populations in disasters to improve policy and practice. Specifically, her dissertation research will focus on children and youth who were affected by the 2013 Colorado Floods. This work will highlight the needs and capacities of young people who experience disasters. What is known about children and disasters often comes from the perspective of adults in their life. The goal of this research is to learn about the experiences of children and youth from their own perspective, in order to reduce harm associated with disaster loss in the future.
Jason Sircely	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability Research Summary: Raised in a rural area outside of Philadelphia by a reporter and a photographer, Jason was fortunate to be exposed to the larger world from an early age. From a student exchange in Mexico City at age twelve to a fairly multi-cultural Quaker high school education, his curiosity in the diversity of human experience has only grown. As a biology undergraduate at Earlham College, Jason focused primarily on ecological and evolutionary ornithology while gaining a broad liberal arts training, and he studied biology and anthropology abroad in Kenya and Ecuador. During his first job out of college conducting fire ecology research and management for The Nature Conservancy, his interest in ornithology began to wane as the first shoots of his work in ecosystem ecology took root. As a volunteer teaching high school science with in northern Ghana, his initial exposure to agricultural development in the tropics was in co-founding a peanut cooperative.
Joel Sholtes	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research Summary: Rivers are formative in both how they shape the landscape and interact with human and ecological communities that live in or near them. Understanding what drivers (flow and sediment) influence the form of different rivers is a fundamental and ongoing question in river science and management, which I am exploring. I am pursuing a PhD in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at CSU where I study how different ranges of flows (common to infrequent) balance sediment inputs in coarse and fine bedded rivers. A number of tools help me investigate this question including theoretical relationships between flow frequencies and sediment movement in rivers, as well as data-driven analyses of flow and sediment movement relationships on rivers across the U.S.
Megan Ruxton	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science Research Summary: When trust between the public and government is damaged, the ability to address pressing, complex issues becomes difficult – even contentious. Megan's research addresses this problem in the context of a cyclical insect outbreak in the forests of eastern Canada which threatens ecological processes and can cause economic losses in the billions of dollars. Past efforts led jointly by government and the forest industry have led to the perception that the economic needs of industry have been placed ahead of the environmental and social needs of the public. As the newest program places scientists at the forefront of efforts to solve the outbreak problem, she will assess whether scientists are able to regain the trust that was lost and thus gain public legitimacy and approval.
Joseph Northrup	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary: Advancements in drilling technology have allowed for economically feasible extraction of oil and natural gas across North America. This shift to domestic energy production has lead to the development of large tracts of public lands in the west, with negative impacts to wildlife species. Joseph's research is based on understanding these impacts and how best to reduce and offset them, with a specific focus on mule deer. Mule deer populations have experienced major declines in recent decades and natural gas development has displaced deer from some areas. His work is focused on understanding the behavioral responses of deer to development and attempting to identify measures to mitigate these responses.
Grace Lloyd Miner	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D. Student, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences Research Summary: Grace is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, as well as a National Science Foundation IGERT fellow in the Integrated Water, Atmosphere, and Ecosystems Education and Research program. Her work focuses on understanding and quantifying plant responses to environmental stresses such as changing water regimes or rising temperatures. Specifically, she examines the subtleties of carbon and water exchange seasonally and under drought stress for field crops such as maize and sunflower. In addition to questions regarding crop productivity, she is interested in the ecological, economic, political, and social processes that shape our food systems.
David Martin	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology Research Summary: Currently, Dave is conducting research as part of an integrative graduate education and research traineeship. Specifically, he is studying the interdisciplinary effects of human alterations to freshwater flow regimes in Colorado. Although Dave is an Ecology major, his research doesn't involve field work in the wilderness. Rather, he engages in person-to-person collaborative projects. He has developed a flexible but effective decision support framework for river management to facilitate stakeholder decisions among multiple social and ecological objectives. This requires him to interact with interested parties and stakeholders and provide them with maps, spreadsheets, and presentations that serve as tools they can use to make better decisions.
Hannakaisa Lindqvist	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: Hannakaisa studies atmospheric carbon dioxide through satellite remote sensing. She compares satellite retrievals of this greenhouse gas to ground-based observations and carbon cycle models, and strives to understand the underlying reasons for the differences in order to improve the retrievals. As a highlight of her postdoctoral period, and the whole carbon cycle science, a new NASA satellite OCO-2 was launched in July 2014 with an ambitious goal to locate the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide; the greenhouse gas that keeps warming our planet. High retrieval accuracy is crucial for reaching this goal.
Ch'aska Huayhuaca	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D. Student, Department of Anthropology Research Summary: The most important land and water issues facing Colorado—including water management, biodiversity protection, land use change, and climate adaptation—increasingly demand collaboration across boundaries. Colorado has experienced a groundswell of community-driven approaches to tackle these complex problems, but no one has attempted to thoroughly track the progress of this movement. Cha'ska's research aims to identify and document the range of initiatives in Colorado, and to explore why they do or do not reach their goals. This research is unique in the breadth of cases being considered, and in its investigation of how these groups evolve over time. As part of this work, Cha'ska and her team are also building tools and resources for people in collaboratives to reach their goals faster and more effectively.
Timothy Hansen	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Research Summary: Tim received his B.S. degree in Computer Engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 2011. He is currently a graduate research assistant in the robust computing group and advanced power engineering laboratory in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Colorado State University, working towards his Ph.D. In 2012, he was named a CSU ISTeC Ph.D. Scholar. Tim's research interests include high-performance computing, renewable energy integration, resource allocation and optimization in multiple disciplines (e.g., power systems, data centers), robust computing systems, and Smart Grid. He is a graduate student member of the IEEE.
Ashley Gramza	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary: Ashley is a Certified Associate Wildlife Biologist who is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology. Her main career interest is integrating social and biological science to investigate complex ecological questions. Originally from Northwest Ohio, she became interested in pursuing an environmental career after reading Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac" and participating in habitat restoration projects in high school. Over the years she has studied a wide-variety of wildlife from snakes in Minnesota and Costa Rica to domestic cats in Boulder, Colorado.
Brian Gill	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D Candidate, Department of Biology Research Summary: Brian is an evolutionary ecologist interested in understanding species vulnerability to rapid global climate change. He has specific expertise in the systematics of mountain stream insects and enjoy working internationally, particularly in the new world tropics. For his doctoral dissertation, he is working with a large team of North American and Ecuadorian researchers to test the distributional predictions of the Climate Variability Hypothesis and the Mountain Passes are Higher in the Tropics Hypothesis by comparing elevational distributions of stream insects in the Colorado Rocky Mountains and the Ecuadorian Andes. Brian and his team hopes to determine if there are differences in stream species vulnerability to rapid global climate change associated with latitude.
Travis Gallo	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D. Student, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary: The U.S. is rapidly developing domestic energy, but at what cost? Colorado’s Piceance Basin provides critical habitat for the largest migratory mule deer herd in the U.S. – and is experiencing an unprecedented level of energy development. Impacts to mule deer from energy development have led managers to clear pinyon-juniper forest to increase plant species considered quality food for this economically important species. Although large-scale forest clearing is occurring throughout the western U.S., we know little about the potential impacts to non-target wildlife in the area. Travis is seeking to answer this question by studying how management actions intended to benefit mule deer may impact other wildlife species, specifically songbirds and non-target mammals.
Anna Fagre	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D. Student, College of Veterinary Medicine and Biological Science Research Summary: Anna is a MPH/DVM student in the CSU College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences finishing her last year of veterinary school. The scope of her research is largely centered around the influence of climate change on infectious disease ecology, with emphases on wildlife conservation and international food security. She is particularly interested in zoonoses that disproportionately burden at-risk populations and diseases at the human-wildlife-livestock interface. Anna works closely with veterinarians and veterinary students at the University of Nairobi, where she has helped implement a bilateral student exchange program to enhance collaborative research efforts between the two institutions. She also currently works with a research team examining the impact of infectious diseases on polar bear populations in a changing climate.
Andrea Clements	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: Andrea’s current research involves measuring air emissions from new oil and gas wells being drilled in Garfield County, Colorado. Specifically, it involves taking out vehicles equipped with some real-time samplers to measure methane and acetylene, some canisters to collect whole-air samples which can be returned to the CSU lab to determine the concentration of 70+ chemical species, and towers to measure meteorology to make measurements downwind of well pads. The ultimate goal of this work is to understand what is being emitted from the drilling process, how those chemicals moves in the atmosphere, and how those emissions impact people.
Jonathan Care	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Economics Research Summary: Jonathan is an economist interested in international environmental issues. His research focuses on how much influence other countries’ choices of pollution limits and labor laws have on our own environmental and labor standards. He is also interested in how this interdependence affects the pattern of investment flowing around the global economy, aiming to uncover a better understanding of how these domestic policies from different countries interact. His aim in doing so is to determine whether countries can attract foreign investment without needing to reduce labor standards or permit additional pollution. This research may help shape policy that avoids future disasters stemming from lax labor laws, like the Rana Plaza factory collapse, or reduces some of the 7 million premature deaths worldwide annually linked to air pollution.
Eleanor Campbell	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability Research Summary: Eleanor uses ecosystem models to simulate how soils are affected by growing crops for fuel (e.g. sugarcane for ethanol). We live in a world largely dependent on burning fossil fuel for energy. This energy source contributes to global climate change by releasing carbon into the atmosphere that otherwise would have been stored in the earth’s crust for millennia. Crop-based biofuels have the potential to be an energy source that contributes less carbon to the atmosphere. However crop-based bioenergy production can also cause the emission of other greenhouse gases, and must be balanced against demands for food and fiber from growing human populations. She uses models to evaluate how different types of bioenergy crop production methods affect soils, to help inform the development of low-carbon fuels.
Wahid Awad	2014-2015	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2014-2015 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences Research Summary: Climate change and drought in particular decreases crops and wheat production worldwide. This leads to crop loss every year for millions of farmers around the world, which increases poverty, starvation, and endangers global food security. My contribution to solving this problem is to discover drought tolerant wheat varieties and genes and explore the role of roots (the hidden plant part) in drought tolerance. My approach is using innovative breeding and genetics technologies. The outcome of this research entails the discovery of highly productive and drought tolerant wheat varieties and genes, which ultimately leads to higher income for farmers, lower food prices, and increased food security worldwide.
Chubashini Suntharalingam	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics Research Summary: Born and raised in Malaysia, I am here in Fort Collins to pursue my Ph.D. at CSU. I have been in the work force for over 15 years with experiences in a wide variety of areas including food security and sovereignty, international trade, agricultural marketing and technology management. I am excited about the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology and the many new perspectives the combination of Ecology and Economics has to offer, which I believe would enrich and enhance my academic and career development.
Katie Renwick	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability Research Summary: I've studied trees as long as I can remember; first as a climber seeking the highest possible perch, and now as a PhD student studying the impacts of climate change. My research lets me explore the forests of Rocky Mountain National Park where I measure trees to track their growth and survival. Mountain forests are thought to be particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and some tree species may vanish from parts of their range as the climate becomes increasingly unsuitable. My goal is to better understand how climate influences which species grow where so that we can create management solutions that maintain healthy forests in the future.
Mónica Páez	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology Research Summary: I am an Evolutionary Biologist born in Ecuador. I investigate how environmental changes along elevation influence the evolutionary processes of natural populations of amphibians. I aim to elucidate the processes that promote and maintain the great biodiversity of tropical mountains.
Shunsuke Nakao	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: I love science. I enjoy standing on the shoulders of giants; I enjoy it even more when I realized how little is actually understood. My current research advances the understanding of how tiny particles and clouds are formed in the atmosphere, which helps people breath cleaner air and better understand global climate.
Stephanie Lynn Moon	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Student, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology Research Summary: Growing up in Colorado, I witnessed the emergence of West Nile virus in the United States first hand, and was struck by the lack of specific treatments and diagnostics that were available. My research in the Wilusz laboratory is aimed at identifying the common molecular mechanisms by which Dengue, West Nile, and Hepatitis C virus affect host gene expression and cause disease. I hope this work will contribute to the development of a cure for this group of emerging viral diseases that are impacting humans and animals worldwide.
Ryan McShane	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology Research Summary: I am a stream ecologist and an outdoor enthusiast who also loves to play around water. I have been fortunate enough to commingle my love of nature and science in a career researching streams and the effects of climate change, land use and water management on the flow regime which influences riverine organisms. My desire is to help us manage rivers in supporting both the human and environmental needs for water.
Matthew W. Luizza	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science Research Summary: My passion is working with communities in remote places to protect their sacred landscapes while preserving their local livelihoods. Through collaborative conservation and engaging the science-policy interface, my research combines the worlds of ecology, ethnobotany, anthropology and political science, as I explore the integration of local ecological knowledge and geospatial mapping and modeling to address environmental challenges of indigenous communities in Alaska and Ethiopia.
Clinton Leach	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology Research Summary: I have always enjoyed seafood but found the ocean to be largely a mystery and it's hard to wrap your head around what life is like for the organisms we harvest and harder still to imagine how they interact with one-another. I'm interested in piecing together those interactions, specifically who eats who and why, to better understand how our own interactions might cascade through, and possibly unexpectedly alter, marine communities.
Jillian M. Lang	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Student, Cell and Molecular Biology Graduate Program Research Summary: I am a molecular plant pathologist passionate about addressing large scale problems, such as international food security and environmental sustainability, through small scale science. More than half our world relies on rice, a simple grass, for food and income. My research explores a mechanism in rice for maintaining resistance to threatening bacterial pathogens, with the ultimate goal of minimizing losses in yield and reducing chemical inputs for management. I am also developing molecular tools to rapidly and accurately identify these bacteria in the field and in quarantine offices.
Matthew Igel	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of atmospheric Science Research Summary: Growing up, I observed that people across the globe have simultaneously a common fascination with and hatred of weather. My PhD work focuses on an aspect of the weather and climate system that is both the bane and boon of billions of people worldwide: tropical thunderstorms. In an effort to help make better predictions and forecasts, I try to answer very basic questions about the physical characteristics of these storms and how they might be affected by climate change.
Heidi Huber-Stearns	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Forest & Rangeland Stewardship Research Summary: As a PhD candidate and research assistant in the department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship, I focus on issues of environmental governance and natural resource policy. My current research investigates incentive-based watershed programs in the western United States. Growing up in a rural environment instilled in me an ethic for land stewardship at an early age, which is reflected in my exploration of the linkages between people and their actions on land.
David Hoover	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology Research Summary: I have always been interested in science. I have an undergraduate degree in ecology and evolution, a master's in Geosciences and soon I'll have a PhD in Ecology. For my dissertation, I'm investigating how climate change will impact grassland ecosystems. But my research experiences have ranged from bacteria to elephants deserts to rain forests and the lab to the field. I believe this broad interdisciplinary training has given me a better perspective to tackle my research questions.
Liesel Hans	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Economics Research Summary: I'm intrigued by how people use water and what barriers exists to households understanding the economic and environmental costs of their use. I aim to find ways to more efficiently and wisely use (or not use!) our common water resources.
Tabitha A. Graves	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary: In a single day, the grizzly bears I study can encounter roads, oil wells, subdivisions, and humans recreating. I develop innovative statistical models and use cutting-edge technologies to understand how to help wildlife flourish along with humans. I am partnering with managers to identify ways to count bears more efficiently in Alberta and answer questions about bear dispersal around Glacier National Park for my David H. Smith Conservation Research Postdoctoral Fellowship. In my free time, I like to hike in wild places, sing, play mandolin, and West African dance.
Jonathan M. Fisk	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science Research Summary: Environmental issues, such as renewable energy, fracking and climate change, are increasingly dotting our natural and political landscapes. As a political scientist focusing on state and local governments, I research many of these debates in the context of political power - whose has it, who wants it and even where it should optimally reside. While, many times my work leads to more questions than answers - it is clear that power matters and that improved environmental governance is possible. My work can be found in journals such as Review of Policy Research and Environmental Management.
Tessa Conroy	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Economics Research Summary: I chose to study Economics because of my interest in local economic development and inequality. As a graduate student, I learned of the large gender gap in business ownership and performance that exists nearly everywhere in the United States. In trying to understand this gender gap, my research focuses on the factors that drive entrepreneurs and how they might differ by gender and by location. Further, I'm also exploring how the gender composition of business ownership affects local economic growth.
Paul Brewer	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D Candidate, Department of Biology Research Summary: During my studies I have come to realize that agriculture has an enormous impact on greenhouse gases and other major environmental issues and that many of these impacts are translated through the microbes inhabiting agricultural soils. Because if this I am now studying these effects and how subtle changes in agriculture may be able to mitigate environmental damage.
Timothy J. Assal	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Anthropology Research Summary: I am a Spatial Ecologist at Colorado State University and the U.S. Geological Survey. I study disturbance impacts on forests which can change how an ecosystem works for many years into the future. I combine field studies, satellite sensors and computer modeling to study ecosystems at regional scales to uncover when, why or where these changes took place. I believe the study of disturbance processes hold great clues to determine how our forests are changing and in the process, provide sound science to resource managers and policy makers alike.
Natalie Anderson	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Student, Department of Geosciences Research Summary: I explore rivers. I am a fluvial geomorphologist. I am a professional whitewater kayaker. My passion for rivers is deep and swift and I enjoy sharing my intellectual and physical journey down them with others. For my dissertation, "Wood Dynamics on the Mackenzie River of Northern Canada", I am looking at how driftwood navigates a large river system on its way to the Arctic Ocean.
Suzan Hassan AlDoubi	2013-2014	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2013-2014 Ph.D. Candidate, School of Education Research Summary: Playing different roles in my life as a mother, wife, daughter, sister, student, and educator, allowed me to be a leader for a long time. Walking through the professional leadership road, I discovered that it is not an easy path for women. Although women have gained leadership positions in various arenas worldwide, including Saudi Arabia, they are still underrepresented in playing such roles in comparison to men. I am so passionate about gender gap in leadership positions and women’s involvement in decision-making in higher education. I seek to explore the path of female leaders in order to inspire future ones.
Fang Wang	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: The transfer of dust from arid and semiarid lands to snow-covered landscapes takes place around the world. The increasing area of arid lands and the utilization of these lands by expanding human population have increased dust loads. In this research, we look at how the dust radiative forcing impacts the melting rate of snow and then further change the river runoff. The results will be important for river forecast and also the timing of the onset of greening and ﬂowering.
Andrew Tredennick	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Ecosystem Science & Sustainability Research Summary: In Africa, wood provides the energy people need to meet the basics of a living standard - cooking, heating, and shelter. So we need to better understand how much wood is available in Africa, how much is produced every year, and how wood extraction affects local and regional ecosystems.
Paul Tanger	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Bioagricultural Science & Pest Management Research Summary: Paul Tanger is working to improve plants for bioenergy use. He recently completed his Ph.D. at CSU, where his research examined the diversity of bioenergy traits in rice, and sought to identify genes underlying these important traits. The goal of this research was to improve rice as a food crop, as well as a source of economical bioenergy from leftover rice straw. Paul is looking forward to applying his skills and experience to link science and energy policy together to improve our lives and environment. In his free time, Paul likes to cook, travel, and moonlight as an amateur photographer and is most likely found enjoying outdoor activities including running, soccer, mountaineering, and backcountry skiing.
Faith Sternlieb	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Geosciences Research Summary: The outcomes of my research will help decision - makers in the Colorado River Basin determine locations where synergy exists between the agricultural sector and other sectors in coordinating efforts to share water. In addition, my research will highlight different types of arrangements for water management that will increase flexibility in water scarce areas. Finally, I will demonstrate that a geographic perspective can offer new ways to look at old problems.
Seema Nayan Sheth	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Ph.D Candidate, Department of Biology Research Summary: Most species are rare, and all species occupy a limited space, yet we do not fully understand why species diﬀer in their geographic distributions. Understanding the factors that govern where species occur improves our ability to prioritize species and areas of conservation concern, forecast vulnerability to climate change, and predict the spread of invasive species. Further, understanding whether populations at the peripheries of species’ geographic ranges can adapt to marginal environments is crucial to predicting how species may shift with environmental change.
Misha Iris Schurman	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Ph.D. Student, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: I study tiny particles suspended in the atmosphere; they can react with pollutants and form more particles, which can be hazardous to animals and plants, travel great distances, and deposit chemicals into natural environments. They can also act as ‘seeds’ for cloud formation, which may impact precipitation patterns and even change the amount of sunlight reaching Earth, which has implications for global warming. It is important to understand how these particles form, react in the air, how far they can travel, and ﬁnally how they are deposited into the ecosystem so that we can decrease harmful environmental effects.
Lindsay Reynolds	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Biology Research Summary: Lindsay Reynolds is a riparian ecologist whose research centers on plants, ecohydrology, climate change and invasions. She received her B.A. in Environmental and Evolutionary Biology from Dartmouth College in 2003 and her Ph.D. in Ecology from CSU in 2009. She is currently a Research Scientist in the Biology Department at CSU and also the US Geological Survey’s Fort Collins Science Center. Recently, her work has focused on how river hydrology and geomorphology influence adjacent plant communities in the context of future climate changes, river regulation and exotic species invasions in western North America.
Kelly Sierra Ramirez	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Global Environmental Sustainability Research Summary: Dr. Kelly S Ramirez is a soil microbial ecologist and is interested in characterizing the diversity and biogeographical patterns of soil microbes across the globe-including-Bacteria, Archaea, fungi and other eukaryotes. Kelly's primary objectives are to (1) characterize the diversity in soils across the globe, from Central Park, NYC to Antarctica, using high-throughput sequencing techniques; (2) understand the mechanisms underlying bacterial community and functional shifts with respect to global change factors; and (3) establish a framework to synthesize global soil biodiversity data. Currently Kelly is a postdoctoral researcher at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO) where she is expanding her research questions to include above-below ground interactions and examine the critical relationships between soil microbial communities and plants. Specifically, she is interested in how soil microbial community composition and diversity may change as plants' expand their range to new locations. In addition to her research, Kelly has led, and is involved in a number of global synthesis and networking efforts: Prior to her position at the NIOO she was the Executive Director of the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative and a postdoctoral scholar at Colorado State University. Additionally, she was Awarded a postdoctoral fellowship with the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity in Leipzig, Germany where she organized an international workshop on the global synthesis of soil biodiversity data.
Holly Marlatt	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Ph.D. Student, Department of Journalism & Media Communication Research Summary: I want to research the climate change communication process so that scientists can better inform journalists, journalists can better inform the public (including policy makers), and the public can come to educated and accurate conclusions. This matters because many people are still not getting “it.” Academic research can help, but only if the research goals involve strategies that can be applied. Additionally, I aim to leverage extreme weather events as climate change communication opportunities. This is relevant because more and more extreme weather events are occurring, yet people ignore the possible linkage. It is our ethical responsibility to adequately inform.
Sarah Maisonneuve	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2012-2013 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Ecosystem Science & Sustainability Research Summary: We are likely witnessing the 6th mass extinction in earth’s history. Many extinctions are the result of humans coming into direct or indirect conﬂict with wildlife. People who live at the immediate interface with wildlife are the most vulnerable to experiencing the negative impacts of co-existing with it, and are also in a position to most strongly inﬂuence its ultimate persistence. My work is dedicated to bridging the disconnect that has developed between humans and wild animals sharing the same landscape, and to bring beneﬁts to local people (both monetary and experiential) that depend upon the persistence of wildlife.
Michelle Meyer Lueck	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Sociology Research Summary: The impacts from disasters are increasing and these impacts are spread unevenly throughout our society. I study both individual and community responses to disaster. I work to understand the diﬀerent risks people face in disaster, and how warnings and preparedness plans can help the most people. What aﬀects the ability of certain people to prepare for and recovery from disaster? What role do organizations (churches, nonproﬁts, governments) play in helping prepare for and then recovery following a disaster, and how can these organizations improve the ability of a community to bounce back from a disaster?
Theresa Jedd	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science Research Summary: Theresa joined the National Drought Mitigation Center in 2015 as an Environmental Policy Specialist looking at the linkage between physical and socio-economic indicators of current and future drought in the recreation and tourism sector in the Western United States. She attended Colorado State University for her M.A. and Ph.D. in environmental policy from the Political Science department. During that time, she also worked as a staff researcher in the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory on Colorado’s first climate vulnerability study. At the drought center, she looks forward to developing a project collaboratively with the National Center for Atmospheric Research that will help make climate forecasting more relevant for outdoor enthusiasts and those working in the tourism industry.
Khishigbayar Jamiyansharav	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Forest & Rangeland Stewardship Research Summary: Khishigbayar Jamiyansharav was a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Forest & Rangeland Stewardship, Colorado State University. She grew up in Ulaanbaatar- Mongolia, where she received her undergraduate degree in chemical technology at the Mongolian State University in 1995. She graduated from the Carl-Von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg in 1999 with Master of Science degree on renewable energy. She was working as scientific researcher on producing biogas from biomass at the Mongolian Renewable Energy Corporation before she came to United States. Khishigbayar obtained her PhD degree in 2010 from Colorado State University Graduate Degree Program in Ecology. Her research interest is on climate change, land atmosphere interactions, coupled human-environmental systems and sustainable technology.
Debra Kaye Holman	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Ph.D. Student, Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources Research Summary: Dr. Kaye Holman was a Sustainability Fellow with the Higher Education Associations Sustainability Consortium where her works focuses on developing and supporting collaborative sustainability education initiatives with national and international higher education associations. Within the field of student affairs, she is also a member of the sustainability committees for ACPA College Student Educators International and NASPA Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. Active in a variety civic and education initiatives in the local community, Kaye is a member of the Community Investment Council and the Community Impact Advocate Award Selection Committee for United Way of Weld County. She has assisted with evaluation of the Fort Collins Boys & Girls Club Public Achievement program and volunteered as a mentor and judge for various K-12 STEM education programs along Colorado’s Northern Front Range. With Dr. Bill Timpson, SoGES Resident Fellow, she co-edited two books published by Atwood: Case Studies of Classrooms and Communication: Integrating Diversity, Sustainability, Peace and Reconciliation ( 2011) and Controversial Case Studies for Teaching on Sustainability, Conflict and Diversity (2014).
Jamie Fuller	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Ph.D. Student, Department of Anthropology Research Summary: The Paciﬁc Islands have been predicted to be the most effected by climate change scenarios. The effects of climate change cannot be fully prevented (severe weather events, drought, warmer temperatures, ocean chemistry changes), but the damages can be lessened through education, preparation and environmental preservation. Educating island nations and communities of these changes and developing plans for food, water and shelter scarcities may be detrimental to avoiding future disasters. Additionally, intact ecosystems will provide an environmental buffer to help sustain both humans and biodiversity. Creating awareness and community discussions is the ﬁrst step in stimulating more adaptable land management plans and subsistence strategies.
Sarah Warner Fitzpatrick	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology Research Summary: Translocations are an important tool used to augment declining populations, yet the consequences are often unknown ahead of time. Gene ﬂow may break down local adaptation, resulting in population declines or it may increase population size by infusing inbred populations with new genetic diversity. My work aims to understand the conditions under which gene ﬂow results in positive or negative population growth by using an introduction experiment with freshwater stream ﬁsh in Trinidad. This information is highly important for wildlife managers to understand when planning conservation strategies for at-risk populations.
Jessica Gilman Ernakovich	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Ph.D. Student, Department of Ecosystem Science & Sustainability Research Summary: Permafrost (or permanently frozen) soils contain vast stores of carbon that may be released to the atmosphere by microbial decomposition if permafrost thaws. Degradation of permafrost has already been observed. Despite the potential for large amounts of carbon to be liberated from permafrost, we lack the understanding of the factors that affect the rate of decomposition in those soils. I am researching how the activity of the microbial community in permafrost changes with an increase in temperature, and how this will affect the amount of carbon stored or released from these soils under future climates.
Sarah Bisbing	2012-2013	Sustainability Research Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability Research Summary: The landscape of North America was historically dominated by large, intact forest. Despite diminishing in size over the last century, these valuable ecosystems continue to provide crucial services to residents of both our wild lands and urban centers. Forest trees are ecosystem engineers that, among other things, promote clean water, provide nutrients for other plants, utilize excessive atmospheric carbon, provide wildlife habitat, and oﬀer both aesthetic and cultural services. In other words, forests (and the trees within them) keep our air and water clean, our wildlife sheltered, our forage-able food (berries and mushrooms) naturally fertilized, and our natural playgrounds beautiful.
Sharon Baruch-Mordo	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Ph.D. Candidate, Depart of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary: Human-wildlife interactions and conﬂicts continue to rise as people build their homes in previously natural areas. Such conﬂicts can negatively impact both people and wildlife; hence we need to better understand both sides of the human-wildlife conﬂict equation. That is, we need to understand how wildlife behaves near people and how to change human behavior to better secure attractants from wildlife, with the ultimate goal of reducing conﬂicts. In this way we can provide real solutions to human-wildlife conﬂicts and promote coexistence between people and wildlife for the prosperity future wildlife populations and the enjoyment of future generations.
Ghassan J. Alaka, Jr.	2012-2013	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2012-2013 Graduate Research Assistant, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: My research matters because Atlantic hurricanes are destructive forces that are not well-predicted. I tackle this issue by improving our understanding of pre-hurricane weather systems over Africa. Although these weather systems regularly move from Africa into the East Atlantic in the summer, it is currently difficult to determine whether or not they develop into hurricanes. The goal of my work is to better predict periods of increased or decreased Atlantic hurricane activity 2-3 weeks in advance.
Thomas Wilding	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph.D. Student, Department of Biology Research Summary: Streams may not enter people‘s thoughts on a daily basis, but we depend on stream water in our daily lives for drinking water and food (e.g. crop irrigation, fish). Healthy streams support healthy communities. The fish and other animals living in streams also have a right to exist whether we benefit from them or not. We have modified our streams and, more importantly, the floods and erosion that create homes for animals and plants. Animals not adapted to this new environment are disappearing. My research looks at how we can balance our needs with that of fish.
Derrick Taff	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph.D. Student, Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources Research Summary: Most of my research takes place in national parks. These protected areas are perhaps our most pristine, relatively untrammeled places on earth. However, escalating visitation and associated depreciative behaviors increase pressures upon the ecological and social aspects of our national treasures. My research explores educational methodologies that encourage environmental ethics, such as those prescribed by the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics. Positively influencing visitor behaviors ensures the overall sustainability of our national parks by sustaining or improving existing resource conditions.
Stephanie Szostek	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph.D. Student, Department of Bioagricultural Sciences and Pest Management Research Summary: Plant diseases have the potential to wipe out entire crops, which would not only effect farmers, but everyone who depends on that crop for either food or plant-derived products (such as cotton). It is important and necessary to understand how a plant disease behaves and what factors contribute to large-scale outbreaks in order find strategies to prevent or manage the disease.
Zachary Sylvain	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph.D. Student, Department of Biology Research Summary: Climate change will affect all of Earth‘s ecosystems and yet the responses of soils have been comparatively understudied, despite the importance that soils and their associated communities play in supporting all terrestrial ecosystems through services such as decomposition, cycling nutrients for use by plants, filtering water and providing food, fuel and fiber for humans. My work investigates how soil animal communities may respond to changes in precipitation patterns resulting form climate change, which I hope to be able to correlate to possible shifts in the services these organisms provide, as well as overall ecosystem functioning (both natural and cultivated systems).
Helen Sofaer	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph.D. Student, Department of Biology Research Summary: Organisms exhibit an incredible diversity of reproductive behavior, and a major goal of evolutionary ecology is to understand how factors such as food availability and predation risk have driven the evolution of this diversity. My research compares populations of Orange-crowned Warblers to ask how populations that experience different ecological conditions differ in their parental investment and behavior, particularly in the number of eggs they lay and the care they provide to nestlings. I am also working to understand how these populations respond to variation in food abundance between years, to predict how they will be affected by climate change.
Erin Schliep	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph.D. Student, Department of Statistics Research Summary: The goal of my work is to develop a modeling framework to yield a uniform assessment tool for wetland health. There is currently a wide range of metrics, or measurements, that can be used to assess conditions of wetlands, and ecological systems in general. By determining which of these metrics of wetland health are effective, we can increase the efficiency of future assessment and prediction, and establish management, protection, and restoration strategies. Lastly, by identifying key factors including human impacts that influence the ecological integrity of wetlands, we can use GIS data layers to predict the health of other wetlands without having to go to each site.
Jessica Salo	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph.D. Student, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary: I use maps to study how human activities, such as development, recreation, and resource extraction, impact our natural resources. Specifically, I am interested in impacts to water because it is a very important resource and is so limited in the western US. My research matters because humans are using water at alarming rates and climate change projections suggest that the western US will become drier.
Colin Quinn	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Biology Research Summary: I study the ecology of selenium in plants. Selenium is a naturally occurring element that is a required nutrient for many animals, including humans, but also toxic at high concentrations. The gap between toxicity and deficiency is narrow, and both are problems worldwide. Although plants do not require selenium, many plant species take up large quantities of selenium. Through increasing our understanding of how selenium in plants affects their ecological partners, such as herbivores and pollinators, we can increase our ability to help manage selenium rich agricultural and natural environments.
DeAna Nasseth	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph.D. Student, Department of Forest & Rangeland Stewardship Research Summary: The majority of the Earth's human population now lives in cities. We are just beginning to scratch the surface in understanding how the urban and suburban built environment interacts with the natural environment and all the benefits it provides for humans for free. Human health and prosperity depends on environmental health and integrity. My research focuses on understanding this interaction between the natural and built environment so that we can plan, design, and manage our cities in a way that does not degrade or destroy the the natural environment and the benefits it provides for humans and other species.
Rachel McCrary	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph.D. Student, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: Rain-fed agriculture is an important source of food and income for the people in West Africa. Being able to accurately represent the West African Monsoon in weather and climate models will hopefully allow us to predict the onset of the monsoon, as well as seasonal rainfall totals. Also, if we can represent the monsoon in present climate simulations, we might be able to understand how the monsoon will change in a warming climate.
Lorene Martinez	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph.D. Student, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology Research Summary: Mycobacterium bovis is a bacterium that causes Tuberculosis in most mammal species, including humans. We have developed genetic fingerprinting protocols to aid in tracking the disease in cattle and wildlife. There is a major financial burden to cattle farmers whose herds become infected due to federal regulations that require increased testing, culling of infected herds, and limits on transport of their cattle. This in turn can drive the cost of beef and dairy products up. There is also a financial impact on states in which deer hunting contributes to the tourism trade when Tuberculosis is endemic in their deer populations.
Justin Lee	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph. D. Candidate, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology Research Summary: We study diseases in natural populations of wildlife across North America. Particularly, we study how urbanization impacts disease transmission among bobcats, mountain lions, and domestic cats. Our research provides insights into wildlife conservation, urban planning, and the transmission of diseases between wildlife, domestic animals, and people.
Katie Langin	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph. D. Candidate, Department of Biology Research Summary: Her research was broadly focused on understanding how populations respond to environmental variation - work that lies at the interface between evolution, ecology, and conservation. Website: https://www.katielangin.com/
Parker Kraus	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph. D. Student, Department of Atmospheric Science
Kristen Kaczynski	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph. D. Student, Department of Forest & Rangeland Stewardship Research Summary: Willow communities are dying back in Rocky Mountain National Park and possibly throughout the West. With a demise of this critical plant community which many species of wildlife and birds depend on, the entire riverine ecosystem will change. My research investigates why this decline is happening and examines the many interacting factors contributing to the dieback, including elk and moose, beavers, birds, fungal infection and climate change. Results from my research will help park managers determine potential restoration options.
Kelly Hopping	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph. D. Student, Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: My PhD research is examining the impacts of climate change on alpine grasslands in Tibet, as well as how these changes could affect the traditional yak and sheep herders who depend on these ecosystems for their livelihoods. Understanding how Tibetan grasslands will respond to warmer temperatures and greater exposure to extreme weather events, such as severe snowstorms, will give insight into how government policies and local land management practices can be adapted to maintain the health of these rangelands while also sustaining their ability to support communities of livestock herders, as they have for millennia.
Amanda Hardy	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph.D. Student, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary: Transportation systems are society‘s arteries, moving people, goods and services that support a high quality of life. However, roads often bisect wildlife habitats, resulting in animal-vehicle collisions; habitat fragmentation; habitat degradation due to light, water, air and noise pollution; and potential barriers to animal movements. As a ―road ecologist‖, I use applied sciences to understand and reduce conflicts between wildlife, transportation infrastructure and people. This work has important implications for driver safety and economic impacts related to animal-vehicle collisions, as well helping wildlife populations persist by allowing their movements through human-dominated landscapes to access resources necessary for survival and reproduction. Advisor: Kevin Crooks
Daniel Deisenroth	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph. D. Student, Department of Agricultural Resource Economics Research Summary: My research focuses on recreational fishery management. Recreational fisheries are managed in a number of ways, but in the United States, one of the most costly and widely used methods is fish stocking (i.e. raising fish and putting them into the water). 2.5 billion individual fish are stocked each year in the US, but the amount of fish stocked in any particular water body is more or less arbitrary, ignoring the costs and benefits of stocking. My research investigates optimal fish stocking (from an economic perspective) so that managers can save money and apply resources where they are needed most.
Karie Cherwin	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph.D. Student, Department of Biology Research Summary: The devastating "Dust Bowl" of the 1930's resulted from severe drought that lasted for multiple years in addition to poor land management practices. Recent climate models predict that extreme weather events, such as severe drought, will occur more frequently and intensely in the future than they have in the past. My research focuses on the ways shortgrass prairies respond to harsh drought conditions, specifically how the plants and soils respond. This research will provide crucial insight for the management of these ecosystems and the services they provide. It will also help prevent any potential future destructive occurrences, such as the ―Dust Bowl‖, given the predicted climate scenarios.
Katharine Benedict	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph. D. Student, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: My research is focused on understanding the types of compounds in the atmosphere and their sources that contribute to ecosystem changes in our national parks. Specifically my research in Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) has measured atmospheric nitrogen containing species that get deposited by precipitation and settling at more than 3 times the background level. This is particularly important in RMNP where the protected ecosystems are nitrogen limited. Nitrogen acts as a fertilizer and changes the plant types altering the function of the ecosystem. Our results have identified organic nitrogen as an important contributor to the increased nitrogen and we are now focusing on its potential sources.
James Benedict	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2011-2012 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Atmospherics Science Research Summary: Predicting future climate is tricky. There are many pieces to the climate puzzle, and computer models used to forecast the climate decades or centuries into the future must get most of these details right. The models must accurately capture the atmosphere‘s general flow as well as smaller features like El Niño. My research aims to improve the model‘s ability to simulate a regional atmospheric pattern called the Madden-Julian Oscillation, which affects the tropical Indian and Pacific Ocean areas. By improving our understanding of this ―puzzle piece‖, we can improve accuracy of climate prediction models and increase confidence in climate forecasts.
Daniel Auerbach	2011-2012	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2011-2012 Ph. D. Student, Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: Humans need and love rivers, streams and lakes. Unfortunately, the combination of ineptitude, social inertia and ignorance have led to their ongoing degradation. If my children and yours are to know the joy of seeing a native fish flash away or discovering strange bugs while playing in a creek that doesn't poison them, then our culture needs to have a meaningful conversation about how it uses water. The current conception has failed, but opportunities exist to sustain local economies while stewarding fluvial biodiversity. We must find and capitalize on them rapidly.
André Dozier	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research Summary: I work on planning for future water resources and public outreach. Specifically, I am building a video game to both educate and extract great ideas from game players. The game is called Dipsa, the Greek word for "thirst," and places the gamer in the role of a water manager who must meet demands from water users constrained by budget and law. Our research is to investigate how well gamers can improve sustainability and equitability of water management compared to computer models.
Nicholas Van Lanen	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Student, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability, Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, and Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory Research Summary: Land management efforts throughout the western United States are increasingly geared to help recover greater sage-grouse populations, and removing conifer trees (e.g. pinyon-juniper) in sagebrush habitats is one widely-implemented management technique. Although research shows this work aids sage-grouse, scientists don’t know how this will affect several declining bird species that rely on these trees. For my PhD, I am evaluating habitat needs of both sagebrush and pinyon-juniper associated birds. I will then use these habitat relationships to develop a landscape plan to help managers target areas for conifer removal which will benefit sagebrush birds without negatively impacting pinyon-juniper associated birds. Advisor: Cameron Aldridge
Thomas Timberlake	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship Research Summary: Climate change compels societies to rethink their relationships with natural environments. I research how the U.S. Forest Service plans and manages for climate change adaptation. Adaptation, in this context, requires scientific information to inform management actions that are more flexible than traditional approaches. However, implementing these new approaches must also comport with existing policy requirements. Successful adaptation proves necessary for forestlands to continue to provide key resources that underpin human wellbeing, including drinking water for downstream communities and recreational opportunities. I intend for my research to support on-the-ground practices, while also contributing to an enhanced theoretical understanding of adaptation. Advisor: Courtney Schultz
Cara Steger	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability, Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, and Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory Research Summary: In a rapidly changing world, humans struggle to address complex environmental “wicked problems” that require collaboration between actors with potentially conflicting objectives. My research informs the sustainable and equitable management of natural resources by focusing on the process of collaborative conservation, where diverse groups of people work together, learn from each other, and make collective decisions about resources. I use models to facilitate collaboration around an issue, evaluating how different kinds of model’s impact learning and decision-making. My dissertation focuses on a case study of shrub encroachment in the Ethiopian highlands to better understand and apply this collaborative modeling process. Advisor: Julie Klein and Paul Evangelista
Evan Sproul	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Student, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Colorado State University Research Summary:I research the sustainability of new technologies such as biofuels and electric vehicles. In my research, I develop computer models to track the energy, materials, and money that go into producing and using a new technology. From these models, I calculate the environmental impact and economic feasibility of the technology. Common results include estimates of greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, annual revenue, and a minimum selling price. Using these results, I compare the advantages of different technologies and identify areas for improvement. Through this research I intend to increase the economic success of technologies that have a low environmental impact. Advisor: Jason Quinn
Ryan Paul	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Bioagricultural Sciences and Pest Management, Colorado State University Research Summary:Invasions of new insect pests are a major problem in agricultural and natural systems. Parasitic wasps called parasitoids are often introduced as a biological control for pest insects, but competition and influence from the plants can affect the success of these wasps. I study how parasitoids use chemicals to compete with one another and how plant defensive chemicals affect parasitoid success in attacking hosts. My research improves our understanding of factors that affect the establishment success of insects after introductions. This information will help us predict the success of biological control introductions and lead to better control of pests. Advisor: Paul Ode
Molly McLaughlin	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Student, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Colorado State University Research Summary:Due to increased demand for water, states are increasingly looking to reuse wastewater from oil and gas production for agricultural purposes. This wastewater contains hydrocarbons, salts, radioactive materials and other contaminants. The environmental and health impacts of reusing this water are largely unknown. My research aims to determine if this practice is sustainable by quantifying chemical changes in soil and water. I also quantify the impact of this wastewater on the health of organisms such as wheat, fish and yeast. Our results will aid development of effective treatment techniques and minimize negative consequences from oil and gas wastewater reuse. Advisor: Thomas Borch
Sheena Martenies	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences Research Summary:My research aims to identify the health effects of early life air pollution exposures, with an emphasis on air pollution from vehicles and industrial sources. I and the team I work with are currently working on a new air pollution model for the Denver metropolitan area that will allow us to better characterize a child’s air pollution exposure from before they were born to now. This information will allow us to understand if air pollution is associated with adverse health outcomes, including childhood obesity. Understanding how air pollution is tied to health outcomes is useful for developing better environmental policies. Advisor: Sheryl Magzamen
Alejandro López-Cerón	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology Research Summary: To grow, crustaceans (crabs, lobsters and shrimp) discard their outer shell and generate a new one during their molt cycle. Natural activities such as feeding, mating, and reproduction are paused through the period of molting, and some species cope with extreme environmental variations of temperature, oxygen, and humidity that may disturb molting. My research focuses on molting process regulation at DNA level, by using molecular biology analysis. My goal is to understand the mechanisms controlling inhibition of molting by environmental stress in crabs, particularly increased temperature due to changing climate; which may enhance the negative effects of stress on molting. Advisor: Donald L. Mykles
Michael Link	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Chemistry, Colorado State University Research Summary:Air pollution is a combination of gases and particles directly emitted from sources, such as vehicles or industry, and emissions that react in the atmosphere to produce pollutants such as ozone or particulate matter. I simulate atmospheric reactions of emissions such as vehicle exhaust and compounds emitted from trees in the laboratory to study what products are formed and how they form. My research provides evidence to suggest that the products formed from reactions of direct emissions in the atmosphere must be considered to understand the true impact of the emission source on air quality. Advisor: Delphine Farmer
Courtney Larson	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Student, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Urban natural areas are protected for several reasons, such as preserving unique natural features, conserving plants and animals, and providing space for outdoor recreation. But can all this occur in the same place? Researchers have found that recreation can have negative effects on wildlife. My research goals are to measure and model recreation in urban natural areas and to assess whether (and how) recreation affects where wildlife are found. I hope to learn about the possible trade-offs between recreation and wildlife conservation and help devise strategies for sustaining the long-term ecological health and wild character of our natural places. Advisor: Kevin Crooks and Sarah Reed
Gretchen Kroh	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology, Colorado State University Research Summary: Iron (Fe) deficiency anemia is the most widespread nutrient deficiency worldwide. One reason for this is that crop plants are also commonly Fe deficient because soil Fe is poorly available. If we can understand how plants regulate their Fe when deficient, we can eventually pinpoint specific pathways and proteins to engineer crops with a higher nutritional value. I study the leaf Fe deficiency response at the molecular level to determine which genes and proteins are being sacrificed during Fe deficiency. During Fe deficiency, photosynthesis related proteins are sacrificed, and I am now investigating the mechanisms that lead to this prioritization. Advisor: Marinus Pilon
Megan Jones	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Student, Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Colorado State University Research Summary: My Ph.D. research looks at how natural resource conservationists are working to make their field more inclusive and empowering. The main stream of my research investigates how gender biases constrain women’s advancement to conservation leadership positions, and how women and organizations are transforming individual behaviors and institutional structures to increase gender equity. The secondary stream of my PhD focuses on conservation behavior change. For this, I am studying how Colorado residents are adopting new gardening behaviors to make their yards wildlife-friendly, how they are encouraging other residents to adopt similar behaviors, and how conservation organizations are supporting this process. Advisors: Jennifer Solomon and Tara Teel
Kevin Jablonski	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Student, Department of Forest and Rangeland Ecology, Colorado State University Research Summary:My dissertation research focuses on larkspur, a group of native perennial plants that are toxic to cattle and present numerous challenges to sustainable grazing management in the western US. Using a complex systems based approach, we are incorporating experimental research, plant surveys, agent-based modeling, and producer knowledge to generate an adaptable new framework for grazing management in larkspur habitat. The aim of this new framework is to allow cattle to graze in larkspur habitat at any time with no deaths, thereby greatly improving producers’ ability to meet economic and ecological objectives while enabling them to move away from destructive herbicides. Additionally, I am leading a collaboration with Lion Guardians, an NGO working in the Amboseli ecosystem of Kenya, to improve understanding of lost livestock, a key driver of conflict between Maasai pastoralists and large carnivores. Advisor: Paul Meiman
Joshua Hewitt	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Statistics, Colorado State University Research Summary: As communities prepare to face changing climates, they must anticipate long-term, local impacts. For example, how might regional precipitation change? City planners want to know how high they should build the next bridge. My research helps address this issue. Climate models can predict changing temperatures at broad scales, but struggle to predict complicated regional characteristics, like December 2020 precipitation for the city of Fort Collins. I develop statistical models to identify complex relationships in data to help scientists predict changing precipitation with climate models. These models require careful integration of interdisciplinary ideas to simultaneously account for global and local relationships.
Desirée Fiske	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Student, Department of Political Science Research Summary:The concept of the Anthropocene spurs creativity for what a new geological epoch, defined by human activities, means for society. My research re-evaluates humans' relationship with nature and the ways in which political processes will evolve in response. As politics begin to integrate the “Anthropocene” into decision-making, what implications will this have for the role of science in politics, international institutions, and human association to nature? I am exploring international connections between national parks (of similar climate and range of biodiversity), as a case of environmental management and communication occurring beyond national boundaries. Advisor: Michele Betsill
Trevor Even	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Student, Department of Anthropology, Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, and North Central Climate Science Center Research Summary:I am an applied researcher focusing on issues of how humans and environments interact, and how we as a global society can do so in ways that ensure long-term sustainability and ecosystem integrity. In the past this has included work on community recovery from natural disaster processes and the vulnerability of land-based livelihoods (such as ranching, outdoor recreation, and farming) to changes in climate. My current work blends anthropological, geographic, climate, and ecosystem science to investigate how different value systems, technologies, ways of understanding nature, and modes of resource governance shape water security and sustainability at the hydrological basin scale. Advisors: Kathleen Galvin and Dennis Ojima
Erin Dougherty	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: Floods are the second deadliest natural disaster in the U.S., with an increased risk of flooding expected due to climate change. The mechanisms by which floods in the U.S. might change in a future climate has not been explicitly examined and is the focus of my research. In order to study these changes, I developed a hydrometeorological climatology of floods over the U.S., which will motivate the specific flood cases to examine in novel, high-resolution regional climate change simulations. These simulations will allow for an understanding of how atmospheric and hydrologic processes might change in future floods. Advisor: Kristen Rasmussen
Whitney Beck	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary:Freshwater algae is an important food resource for aquatic insects and fish. However, when fertilizers and other nutrient sources are added to rivers and streams, large algal blooms can form that lower stream oxygen and degrade ecosystems. My research focuses on factors that interact with nutrients to control algal growth, such as temperature, streamflow, and aquatic insect consumption. I am using Colorado-based field experiments and national modeling studies to better understand basic algal ecology to inform water quality policies and stream management strategies. Advisor: LeRoy Poff
Theresa Barosh	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Bioagricultural Sciences and Pest Management and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: As a PhD student in Dr. Paul Ode's lab at CSU, I am studying the intersection of species biodiversity and environmental stewardship. Those that practice environmental stewardship often have interests in biodiversity and species composition. Species coexistence is an important component of biodiversity. However, the mechanisms and circumstances that allow species to coexist remain unclear. Instances in which humans introduce new species to ecosystems can be useful for examining the resulting species interactions and outcomes. Studying anthropogenic introductions of plants and insects, I am examining how species that share resources coexist with one another. Advisor: Paul Ode
Bethany Avera	2018-2019	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2018-2019 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory Research Summary: Disturbances and management in forest ecosystems can impact the amount of carbon stored in the forest system. I am studying how the outbreak of a native pine beetle and subsequent logging have impacted carbon storage in Colorado lodgepole pine forests, specifically in the soil. By quantifying the carbon in woody residues, the forest floor and in the mineral soil of an unmanaged beetle-infested stand and a logged stand I can identify the dominant sources of soil carbon. The recent beetle outbreak was climate-driven, motivating the need to identify management actions that promote forest carbon storage to help mitigate climate change. Advisor: M. Francesca Cotrufo
Edward Hall	2011-2012	Associate Professor, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability, Colorado State University Ed Hall is a systems scientist working to understand how microorganisms control and constrain transformative processes in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. His research crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries, linking physical and ecological sciences and scales from single-cell microbiology to integrated watershed analyses of coupled human and natural systems. Resident Fellowship Year: 2020-2021 Research Focus: Freshwater aquaculture, a potential sustainable solution to meet growing food demands, can have a substantial negative effect on surrounding freshwater ecosystems. Ed Hall will establish the first set of science-based sustainability standards to mitigate the impact of net-pen aquaculture on inland water ecosystems by examining aquaculture operations on Lake Yojoa, a large tropical lake in Honduras, Central America. He will work closely with several stakeholders: a major producer of tilapia, a large tilapia importer, and local watershed managers who work to mitigate the impact of human activities on the lake. By synthesizing legacy and contemporary datasets from Lake Yojoa, Hall will be able to assess the impact of aquaculture on the Lake Yojoa ecosystem and compare the impact of net-pen aquaculture with the impact of all other activities within the watershed. In concert with stakeholders mentioned above, Hall will work to establish a series of standards that can be applied industry wide to mitigate the impact of inland water aquaculture and create a more sustainable freshwater aquaculture industry. Hall’s time as a Resident Fellow will demonstrate the power of fundamental ecosystem science to create sustainability practices that have large societal benefits. Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2011-2012 Postdoctoral Fellow, USGS Medenhall Fellow Research Summary: Natural ecosystems provide humans with innumerable services – clean drinking water, clean air, sufficient oxygen, high fish yields for consumption and sport fishing. As the human population grows from it‘s current size of 6 billion towards a projected 8 billion people over the next 40 years how will we ensure that these services are continuously provided to most if not all of the human population. My research helps us gain basic understanding of how elements are processed in the natural environment and in effect how ecosystem services are renewed and maintained. Defining these relationships will help us manage our ecosystem services under increasing anthropogenic demands.
Kate Wilkins	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary:The recent push to reintroduce bison across the United States has the potential to restore grassland habitat for birds and other animals, while also engaging the public in grassland conservation. My research measures differences in grassland bird, mammal, and vegetation communities before and after bison reintroduction, as well as between bison and cattle grazed sites in northern Colorado. In addition, I am comparing how connected human visitors feel toward the reintroduction site before versus after the bison reintroduction. This study could serve as a model for the ecological and social assessment of future bison reintroduction efforts in western grasslands. Advisor: Liba Pejchar HumanNature blog
Rekha Warrier	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Student, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary:My research explores the myriad ecological and social dimensions associated with the conservation of large mammals, particularly tigers in human dominated landscapes in India. In the past my research has focused on estimating the spatial distribution and abundance patterns of tigers and their prey to inform the management of these populations in small and fragmented protected areas in northern India. My ongoing doctoral research addresses the more complex challenge of ensuring the conservation of these species when they occur outside protected area boundaries amidst dense human populations using a combination of ecological and social research techniques. Advisor: Barry R. Noon HumanNature blog
Dhaval Vyas	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Bioagricultural Sciences and Pest Management Research Summary:When animals enter new habitats, they often compete with native species for limited resources. Stronger competitors can drive away weaker competitors, but we are often unsure of how species out-compete one another. To fill this gap, I study parasitic wasps that are introduced to farms for controlling pest insects. The introductions set up a natural experiment to study competition between new and existing species. My research increases our knowledge of how environments respond to new species. This information is important for understanding the threat from plants and animals that invade existing habitats. Advisor: Paul Ode HumanNature blog
Tony Vorster	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Student, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary:My research informs the sustainable management of forests. Specifically, I study how bark beetle outbreaks, fires, and timber harvesting impact forest health and the amount of carbon forests store. Satellite imagery allows me to study forests across large areas and to look back in time at historical forest structure and management. I incorporate climate change scenarios in my research to understand the potential responses of forests to a changing climate. Advisor: Paul Evangelista HumanNature blog
Jessica Tryner	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Mechanical Engineering Research Summary:I am interested in research topics related to energy, combustion, and air pollution. The goal of my research is to reduce emissions of pollutants such as carbon monoxide and particulate matter, which are harmful to human health, from combustion systems. To that end, I study how changes in design, fuels, and operational parameters affect emissions from devices such as household biomass cook stoves and diesel engines. Advisor: Anthony J. Marchese HumanNature blog
Daniel Scott	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Student, Department of Geosciences Research Summary: I study the physical processes that store carbon in river systems. Carbon in greenhouse gases, both natural and human-produced, drives climate change. However, over half of the world’s carbon is stored on the land, and land management will determine whether that carbon will keep accumulating in soils or be released to the atmosphere, accelerating climate change. River systems modify the landscape and store large amounts of carbon on floodplains and as downed wood. I study how that storage varies across different river systems, and how land management can maximize the storage of carbon on the landscape to mitigate climate change. Advisor: Ellen Wohl HumanNature blog
Jacob Salcone	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Student, Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources Research Summary:My research investigates ways to measure and protect the benefits that humans receive from natural ecosystems, referred to as “ecosystem services”. I combine economic and ecological impact evaluation methods to measure the capacity of resource management and conservation programs to protect or augment the provision of ecosystem services. As member of an interdisciplinary NSF project, I am evaluating the effectiveness of a Payment for Ecosystem Services program in Mexico to incentivize changes to land-use within watersheds critical to provision of clean drinking water. This research enables calculation of the return-on-investment of resource management and conservation initiatives. Advisor: Kelly Jones HumanNature blog
Laura Rosen	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Clinical Sciences and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary:Tuberculosis (TB) is a deadly infectious disease that affects millions of humans, livestock, and wildlife around the world, and costs millions of dollars to control. My research focuses on management of TB in wildlife using approaches from ecology and veterinary epidemiology. I study European badgers in Ireland, African and Asian elephants in the United States, and African elephants in Zimbabwe. The goal of my dissertation research is to improve our understanding of how to prevent, diagnose, and manage TB in both captive and wild animal populations. This work provides wildlife managers with information to benefit wildlife health and conservation. Advisor: Francisco Olea-Popelka HumanNature blog
Faizal Rohmat	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research Summary:I am working on a geographical information system (GIS) software development for a USDA-funded project taking place in the Lower Arkansas River Basin. I use machine learning techniques to leverage detailed regional-scale groundwater models into a basin-scale model. This model will be used for planning and analysis of management practices in the basin to ensure water quality and agriculture productivity enhancement. Advisor: John W. Labadie HumanNature blog
Kerry Rippy	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Chemistry Research Summary: I work to develop new materials for organic photovoltaics. Unlike the heavy, rigid, dark-colored inorganic panels you probably think of when you hear ‘photovoltaics,’ organic photovoltaics are made from small, carbon-based molecules. Therefore, they are lightweight, flexible, and have tunable color and transparency. In other words, through organic photovoltaic technology, everything from fabric to windows can produce energy! In fact, solar windows and roll-up sheets of solar plastic are already commercially available. However, improved materials could catapult this technology from an emerging field to a staple of energy production, so I work to improve material lifetime and charge transport properties. Advisor: Steven Strauss
Alexandra Naegele	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Student, Department of Atmospheric Science Research Summary: My research focuses on the relationship between the atmospheric energy budget and the hydrologic cycle. Precipitation is one of the most important aspects of the climate system affecting life on earth, however, it’s among the most poorly represented variables in global climate models. I use models on smaller scales to investigate the processes affecting the intensity and distribution of precipitation. A large part of my research focuses on the role of clouds in this relationship and how precipitation might be expected to change in a warming climate. Advisor: David Randall HumanNature blog post: http://blog.sustainability.colostate.edu/naegele
Rod Lammers	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research Summary:Urbanization is accelerating around the world. As we build cities and pave over the natural landscape, we keep water from soaking into the ground, concentrating more of it in stream channels. This causes excessive erosion in urban streams, which degrades this important habitat, threatens bridges and other infrastructure, and impairs water quality. I’m developing a computer model to predict how quickly and how much stream channels will erode in response to urbanization and other disturbances. This will allow us to better plan for and respond to the damaging effects of extreme stream channel erosion. Advisor: Brian Bledsoe HumanNature blog
Ava Hoffman	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: One of the most consistent patterns in ecosystems is that species vary in their abundance: a few species are very common while many are rare. These common species are disproportionately responsible for how ecological communities function. In particular, variation within the common species may be important for responding to and protecting communities from climate change. I study the very common drought-tolerant prairie grasses of the American Midwest to answer questions about within-species diversity. By exploring genetic diversity within the common species, I am helping determine if they can buffer ecological communities from dramatic shifts caused by drought. Advisor: Melinda D. Smith HumanNature blog post: http://blog.sustainability.colostate.edu/?q=hoffman
Carolina Gutierrez	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Student, Department of Biology Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary: My research focuses on the changes in the functional structure of aquatic insect communities across altitudinal and latitudinal ranges (Tropics vs temperate zones). Functional structure relates to the number, type, and distribution of functions performed by organisms within an ecosystem. I want to know how different latitudes and elevations affect the functional diversity of aquatic insects, and also how insect’s function in streams respond to changes in canopy cover and water temperature along altitudinal gradients in temperate streams. This knowledge could give stream ecology science some insight in how climate change and loss of riparian vegetation affect the whole stream. Advisor: N. LeRoy Poff HumanNature blog post: http://blog.sustainability.colostate.edu/gutierrez
Robert Griffin-Nolan	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Student, Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary:I study the different strategies that grasses use to deal with drought. As soil dries, some grasses play it safe and close the little pores on their leaves where water is exchanged for carbon dioxide, the building block for plant food. Bolder grasses, however, leave their pores open during drought to continue making food at the risk of losing too much water and causing whole leaves to die – a huge waste of energy for the plant. I use these strategies to explain how drought can limit plant growth in North American grasslands, which provide food for beef cattle. Advisory: Alan Knapp HumanNature blog
Erika Foster	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Research Summary:As farmers face increasing drought in the West, we need to determine best practices to maintain yield, including irrigating when crops need water most and improving soil structure through organic amendments. In my research in reduced irrigation corn and wheat fields, we compare traditional manure application versus an innovative charcoal amendment called “biochar”. Similar to charcoal from a fireplace, biochar has tiny pores that can hold water and plant nutrients. When added to soil, this biochar amendments can make water and nutrients more available to the crops, ultimately making food production more efficient and sustainable. Advisory: Francesca Cotrufo HumanNature blog
Stephen Cohen	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Bioagricultural and Pest Management Research Summary:I study how climate change affects plant disease in crops. Plant diseases cause a 10% reduction in food production each year, and these diseases are often more severe at high temperatures. The cause for this phenomenon is unknown. Using computational analysis and molecular biology techniques, I am investigating rice and the bacterial blight pathogen during high temperature stress. I predict that the high temperature causes imbalances in plant hormones that render plants unable to defend themselves again pathogens. My work will lead to the development of disease immunity in crops during the high temperatures associated with climate change. Advisory: Jan Leach HumanNature blog
Rachel Buxton	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Research Summary:As a broadly trained conservation biologist, I study the science of sound in a landscape, known as soundscape ecology. Sounds are a fundamental property of the natural environment – where animal vocalizations regulate ecological processes, for example predator-prey interactions. In this context, anthropogenic noise can have serious consequences, masking important sounds, and changing wildlife behavior and physiology. Thus, I use acoustic recordings to monitor biodiversity, ecological health, and the harmful effects of noise pollution on wildlife. Combining cutting-edge sound modelling and recordings I am helping build a national framework for noise management in protected areas for the National Park Service. Advisory: George Wittemyer HumanNature blog
Andrea Borkenhagen	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship North America’s largest oil deposit is in Alberta’s oil sands region where mining extraction operations remove vast areas of forest and peatland wetlands. Traditional reclamation ignored peatlands because they require precise hydrologic conditions, specific plant species, and take long time periods to develop. To advance reclamation standards that include these important ecosystems, scientists and operators collaborated on the first entirely reconstructed peatland in 2013. My research focuses on developing methods to establish plants and initiate ecosystem processes comparable to natural analogues. My overall goal is to introduce practical strategies to reclaim peatlands in heavily impacted areas around the world. Advisor: David Cooper HumanNature blog post: http://blog.sustainability.colostate.edu/borkenhagen
Elizabeth Bach	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2016-2017 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Biology Research Summary: She is a soil microbial ecologist interested in exploring how fungal and bacterial communities influence ecosystem functions, specifically carbon and nitrogen cycling. She also investigates interactions between soil microbes and soil structure. Her research focuses on restored grassland systems in central North America. She received her Ph.D. from Iowa State University and MS from Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Stacia Ryder	2016-2017	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Sociology Research Summary: Broadly, my work focuses on societal-environmental interactions. Specifically, I research how environmental harms and benefits influence people’s lives - their health, relationships, and interactions - unevenly in the context of resource development and disasters. For example, low-income, communities of color are often exposed to higher levels of toxins and are more vulnerable to natural and technological disasters than other communities. As an environmental sociologist, it is important for my work to integrate research findings into policy and practice in an effort to encourage efforts addressing environmental inequalities and sustainable practices for all, worldwide.
Libby Christensen	2017-2018	Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics Research Summary: Trained broadly as a geographer, I use quantitative and qualitative data to better understand the challenges and opportunities to building a more sustainable and resilient food system. Currently, I am researching the impacts of food and agriculture on rural wealth creation including the preservation and conservation of natural resources. In particular, I am interested in the ways that food and agriculture can strengthen the linkages between rural and urban communities helping to breakdown the rural urban divide. The results of the research will be used to inform government rural development initiatives and further the theoretical and empirical foundation of rural wealth creation. Mentor: Becca Jablonski HumanNature blog

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Postdoctoral Fellow, Colorado Natural Heritage Program

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Ph.D. Student, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Ph.D. Student, Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Geosciences

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Atmospheric Science

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Ph.D. Student, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and the Department of Construction Management

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Ph.D. Student, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Ph.D. Student, Department of Biology and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Chemistry

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Ph.D. Student, Department of Chemistry

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Sociology

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Ph.D. Student, Department of Economics

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Construction Management and the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Ph.D. Student, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2023-2024

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Agricultural Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Economics

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Biology

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture and Cell & Molecular Biology

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Ph.D. Student, Department of Economics

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Ph.D. Student, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Ph.D. Student, Department of Atmospheric Science

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology and Biology

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Atmospheric Science

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Geosciences

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Ph.D. Student, Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability and Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Agricultural Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Ph.D. Student, Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Ph.D. Student, Department of Agricultural Biology

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2022-2023

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Atmospheric Science

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology

Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2021-2022

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology

Executive Director of the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative