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.