Three new faculty members will be joining the School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) in the Fall 2026 semester. Kristy Ferraro will be an assistant professor specializing in Ecosystem Science and Management, and will be part of the Institute for Global Change Biology and the Program in the Environment. Lauren Gillespie will be an assistant professor specializing in Geospatial Data Sciences and Ecosystem Science and Management. Marcelo S. O. Goncalves will be an assistant professor, specializing in Sustainability and Development, and will be part of the Institute for Global Change Biology.

Kristy Ferraro
Kristy Ferraro joins SEAS as an assistant professor, transitioning from her initial appointment as a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, specializing in Ecosystem Science and Management. Kristy is an ecosystem ecologist interested in how to incorporate animals into current ecological paradigms. She explores how animals interact with their environments and how conservation considers animals in decision-making. Her research is also focused on environmental ethics, asking how values and norms shape the questions we ask, the ecosystems we prioritize and the futures we imagine. In her work, Kristy combines ecological and philosophical theory, empirical fieldwork and modeling to understand complex environmental systems, working to bridge disciplines and connect rigorous science with ethics to contribute to thoughtful and compassionate conservation and environmental change. 

Lauren Gillespie
Lauren Gillespie joins SEAS an assistant professor, specializing in Geospatial Data Sciences and Ecosystem Science and Management. She earned her PhD from Stanford University this year and completed a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With a background in both computer science and biology, Lauren’s interdisciplinary research develops new AI-integrated approaches for monitoring ecosystems at scale. Her work develops foundation models, AI models that can rapidly make sense of large-scale but noisy data with little guidance, and aims to uncover the effects of rapid environmental change on species to improve our ecological forecasting of the natural world. By leveraging diverse and widely available data from sources including remote sensing and citizen + community science, her research aims to create models of biodiversity that are accurate and useful for conservation decision-makers around the world.

Marcelo S. O. Goncalves
Marcelo S. O. Goncalves joins SEAS as an assistant professor, specializing in Sustainability and Development, and as part of the Institute for Global Change Biology. Marcelo earned his MA in Economics and PhD in Public Policy from Duke this year. He is a political economist whose work sits at the intersection of development, climate and environmental policy. His research examines how institutions, incentives, and individual behavior shape the design, implementation, and impacts of environmental and development policies, with a particular focus on low- and middle-income countries. He adopts an interdisciplinary approach to identify the conditions under which policy interventions generate durable environmental and development gains in support of sustainable development. Marcelo’s research is informed by nearly 15 years of experience as a Specialist in Public Policy and Management in the Brazilian federal government, where he contributed to policy evaluations and led initiatives spanning food security, racial equity and climate adaptation.