SEAS Faculty

Jose F. Alfaro

Assistant Professor of Practice

Environmental Policy and Planning, Sustainable Systems

Dr. Alfaro’s work uses engineering and complex systems tools such as Agent-Based Modeling, System Dynamics, and Network Science. In line with his position as a Professor of the Practice, Dr. Alfaro’s scholarship has an applied focus.  This has led him to work closely with communities, industry, NGO’s, and government organizations in developing his work. Dr. Alfaro is also the founder and faculty director of Sustainability Without Borders, an interdisciplinary student organization that works with communities to develop ethical partnerships for learning and enhancing sustainability.  This organization labors to provide students with a meaningful engaged experience that also increases the capacity of the communities and NGO’s it works with and increases their well-being. 

Dr. Alfaro’s scholarship revolves around three main efforts:

1. Using Industrial Symbiosis at the small-scale to increase communities’ sustainability and well-being
2. Deploying renewable energy for sustainable development of least industrialized countries
3. Developing tools for policy and decision-making through computer modeling of socio-technical systems

Joe Árvai

Max McGraw Professor of Sustainable Enterprise; Director, Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise

Behavior, Education and Communication, Environmental Policy and Planning, Sustainable Systems

Dr. Joe Árvai is the Max McGraw Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the School for Environment and Sustainability, and the Stephen M. Ross School of Business. He is also the Director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise. Joe is an internationally respected expert in the risk and decisions sciences, and he is a frequent advisor to governments, government agencies, NGOs, and the private sector.

The research carried out by Joe and his group has two main areas of emphasis: First, Joe and his research group conduct experiments and surveys aimed at advancing our understanding of how people—working individually and in groups—process information and make choices with a specific focus on how people make (or, often, attempt to avoid) necessary tradeoffs. Second, Joe and his team conduct research focused on developing and testing decision-aiding tools and approaches that can be used by people to improve decision quality across a wide range of environmental, social, and economic contexts.

Research in Joe’s group is applied, and accounts for decision-making by a broad spectrum of public and stakeholder groups, as well as by technical experts, business leaders, and policy makers. To support their applied focus, Joe and his group conduct research across a wide range topical and pressing decision contexts; these contexts range from environmental risk management and business strategy, to consumer choice and policy-making.  

A hallmark of the work in Joe’s group is making results and recommendations from their research available and—importantly—useful to wide range of audiences, including other scholars, policy-makers, business leaders, and the public.

Kathleen Bergen

Associate Research Scientist

Conservation Ecology, Environmental Informatics, Conservation & Restoration

Associate Research Scientist Kathleen Bergen, PhD, works in the areas of human dimensions of environmental change; remote sensing, GIS and biodiversity Informatics; and environmental health and informatics. Her focus is on combining field and geospatial data and methods to study the pattern and process of ecological systems, biodiversity and health. She also strives to build bridges between science and social science to understand the implications of human actions on the social and natural systems of which we are a part.

Jennifer Blesh

Assistant Professor

Conservation Ecology, Food

As a broadly trained agroecologist, Jennifer Blesh, PhD, uses interdisciplinary research approaches to understand how different agrifood systems impact ecological and social processes. Her ecological research focuses on soil nitrogen and carbon biogeochemical cycles, agroecosystem nutrient management, and legume nitrogen fixation. Blesh’s research program pays particular attention to alternative production-consumption relations, and is guided by a pragmatic motivation to support development of more ecologically sustainable and equitable food systems. Previous to her position at SEAS, Blesh served as a post-doctoral fellow with the National Science Foundation International Research Fellowship Program at the Federal University of Mato Grosso in Brazil. Current projects include assessing the socioecological resilience of family farms in Brazil, and research in the U.S. centered on cropping system diversification through winter cover crops and improving nitrogen retention in farm fields.

Bilal Butt

Associate Professor

Environmental Informatics, Environmental Justice

Bilal Butt, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability and a faculty affiliate of the African Studies Center as well as the Science Technology and Public Policy Program. His research is broadly concerned with Environmental Geopolitics and examines the power relationships inherent in the formation of environmental conflicts (ranging from ivory poaching to marine issue). He has conducted research on the political ecology of pastoralism and protected areas in East Africa for the last 20+ years and places a large emphasis on empirical fieldwork to understand the lived geographies of the interactions between pastoralists and wildlife in ecologically diverse regions. He combines various geospatial technologies (such as putting GPS units on cows) with historical and ecological dynamics of dryland environments to understand how people, wildlife and livestock are coping with and adapting to changes in climate and politics. He is also interested in the ways that scientific and technical appraisals of rangeland peoples and environments have misread the landscape, leading to orientalist approaches to development programs. He has also had a long history of engagement on questions of environmental conflicts, particular around wildlife poaching, land grabs and green eneregy. Dr. Butt is an NSF Career Award winner and a receipient of the SEAS Outstanding Teacher Award. He has published in diverse journals such as the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Remote Sensing of Environment, Journal of Applied Ecology and Humanity. He teaches courses on Conservation and Development, Political Ecology, Environmental Security and Conflict, Environmental Governance, and Preparing for International Fieldwork. 

Bradley J. Cardinale

Professor; Director, Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR)

Conservation Ecology

Professor Cardinale is an ecologist who uses mathematical models, novel experiments, observational studies and meta-analyses to examine how human activities impact biological diversity, and to predict how changes in biodiversity affect the goods and services ecosystems provide to humanity. His research, teaching, and professional service are all tied together by a common thread, which is to produce and distribute the knowledge needed to conserve and restore the variety of life on Earth.

Professor Cardinale teaches classes in Conservation Biology, Ecological Restoration, and Ecosystem Services. He has published more than 110 scientific papers and popular articles, and won numerous awards. He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Ecological Society of America.  In 2014, Cardinale was named one of ‘The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds′ by Thomson Reuters, one of the main sources of impact factors used in the assessment of scientific articles and careers. 

Casey Godwin

Research Scientist

Conservation Ecology, Water, Conservation & Restoration

Dr. Casey Godwin recently joined CIGLR as an Assistant Research Scientist. He has a Ph.D. in ecology, evolution, and behavior from the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on how the elemental requirements of bacteria and algae couple carbon and nutrient cycles in freshwater ecosystems. The driving question behind this work is “as we continue to pollute our aquatic ecosystems with excess nutrients, will cycling of carbon and other elements change in proportion, or will fertilization decouple key ecosystem processes?” He has examined this question in the context of impact of stream algae on nutrient retention within watersheds, functional diversity of freshwater bacteria in response to land use change, and most recently, minimizing the fertilizer demand of renewable fuels produced from algae. As part of CIGLR, he is working on projects including the effects of nutrient abundance and forms on harmful algal blooms and the influence of hypoxia on the biogeochemical cycling of nutrients and heavy metals in Lake Erie.

Stella Cousins

Research Scientist

Conservation Ecology

Dr. Stella Cousins is an ecosystem ecologist interested in understanding how and why forests change. She uses patterns measured in trees and forests such as growth, mortality, and community dynamics to reveal how ecosystems respond to human demands and disturbances. Her current research focuses on the drivers of tree mortality in California forests and the transformations that can be expected in ecosystems that experience rapid change. In earlier research she has examined forest carbon processes, air pollution impacts to montane forests, provision of watershed services, and the management of vegetated cultural landscapes. Her work leverages comprehensive surveys conducted by the USFS Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program, long-term monitoring, and measurements ranging from individual tree rings to whole forest structures. Dr. Cousins is broadly interested in how landscapes can be sustainably managed for multiple benefits, which often involves collaborating on multi-disciplinary teams and investing in place-based data collection. She is especially interested in social-environmental problems facing the Western United States. Prior to joining SEAS, Dr. Cousins was an Assistant Professor at California Polytechnic State University and a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley. She completed her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley and was a graduate fellow at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC). 

Bill Currie

Professor

Conservation Ecology, Environmental Informatics, Conservation & Restoration

Bill Currie, PhD, is interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the environment and the development of sustainability science. His research and scholarly interests include ecosystem ecology, biogeochemistry including carbon and nutrient cycling, physics and energetics, landscapes and coupled human-natural systems, land conservation and management, biofuels and food security, computational modeling and simulation, synthesis using models, and philosophical foundations of modeling.

Currie has a background in ecosystem ecology, biogeochemistry (nutrient and carbon cycling), energetics, systems dynamics modeling and individual-based / agent-based modeling. He is interested in using our current understanding in these fields to investigate ecosystem change and dynamics in coupled human-environment systems.

Currie studies the linkages among carbon, nutrient, and water cycling and energy flows and transformations in terrestrial ecosystems and human-environment systems.  He is interested in using our current understanding of ecosystems to explore creative, new understanding of the two-way interactions in human-environment systems.  He works at scales from field plots to landscapes, collaborating with other researchers and students to integrate understanding and build models for synthesis.  The goal of this research is to contribute to the developing field of sustainability science using an approach that grows out of ecosystem science. 

Ivan Eastin

Research Professor; Associate Dean for Research and Engagement

Environmental Policy and Planning, Sustainable Systems, Conservation & Restoration, Cities, the Built Environment, and Mobility

Professor Ivan Eastin is a research professor in SEAS and serves as the Associate Dean for Research and Engagement. Prior to coming to UM in 2017, he served as a professor and the Director of the Center for International Trade in Forest Products (CINTRAFOR) in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington. He also served as the Associate Dean for Research in the College of the Environment at UW, was the faculty leader for the Peace Corps Masters International Program in Forestry and Sustainable Resource Management and was named a UW CoMotion Presidential Innovation Fellow.

Internationally, his research focuses on understanding how trade policies, including timber legality regulations, affect the international trade of wood products in general and the competitiveness of US wood products in particular. Domestically, Eastin's research focuses on the process of innovation and evaluating the factors that influence the introduction and adoption of new wood products, including mass timber products such as thermally modified wood and cross-laminated timber. He also works with Native American communities to improve their capacity to more effectively market tribal wood products in the US and internationally.  

Ivan received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in wood science and technology from Michigan Technological University (1983, 1985) and his doctorate degree in forest products marketing from the University of Washington (1992). He was a Fulbright Fellow in Ghana (1989-90), a Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia (1985-87) and served in the US Army (1976-79).

Johannes Foufopoulos

Associate Professor

Conservation Ecology, Conservation & Restoration

Johannes Foufopoulos, PhD, focuses his lab research on fundamental conservation biology questions and on issues related to the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases. Major research projects examine how habitat fragmentation, invasive organisms and global climate change result in species extinction. Other projects address questions regarding the impact of diseases on wildlife populations and the environmental causes leading to disease emergence.

Ayumi Fujisaki-Manome

Assistant Research Scientist

Climate and Energy

Research Interests:

• Polar oceanography 
• Numerical modeling of sea ice and ocean/lake hydrodynamics 
• Lake ice and lake effect snow in the Laurentian Great Lakes region

Drew Gronewold

Associate Professor

Conservation Ecology, Climate and Energy, Water

Professor Gronewold’s research interests lie in hydrological modeling, with a focus on propagating uncertainty and variability into model-based water resources management decisions. His specific research areas include predicting runoff in ungauged basins, monitoring and understanding water quality dynamics in coastal areas, and incorporating probability theory and Bayesian statistics into watershed-scale data sets and forecasting tools.

He holds an adjunct appointment in the U-M Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Prior to his appointment in SEAS, he worked in the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory as a hydrologist and physical scientist.

Sara Hughes

Assistant Professor

Climate and Energy, Water, Cities, the Built Environment, and Mobility

Professor Hughes' research focuses on the political and institutional dimensions of sustainable and equitable water and climate change policies, primarily in the urban context. Current projects examine the politics and production of safe and affordable drinking water in the U.S., the policy failures behind the Flint water crisis, and urban climate change governance, including equitable approaches to building urban climate resilience.

Inés Ibáñez

Associate Professor

Conservation Ecology, Landscape Architecture, Climate and Energy, Conservation & Restoration, Cities, the Built Environment, and Mobility

Associate Professor Ibáñez's major research interests focus on the current challenges that plant communities are facing in the context of global change, i.e. climate change, invasive species, and landscape fragmentation. These challenges are interconnected as they form the novel environment under which plants are growing. The fact that forest communities are highly dependent on recruitment dynamics makes the study of early demographic stages critical for understanding the impact of global change on the natural ecosystems around us. To isolate these phenomena, Ibáñez directs her research at the recruitment of dominant tree species, from seed production to the sapling stage, including seed dispersal, germination, establishment and survival during the first years. Results obtained from this line of research are essential to forecast reliable vegetation changes under future climate scenarios.

Meha Jain

Assistant Professor

Environmental Informatics, Environmental Justice, Climate and Energy, Food

Assistant Professor Jain's research examines the impacts of environmental change on agricultural production, and strategies that farmers may adopt to reduce negative impacts. She does this by combining remote sensing and geospatial analyses with household-level and census datasets to examine farmer decision-making and behavior across large spatial and temporal scales. To date her work has focused on the impacts of weather variability and groundwater depletion on agricultural production in India, and whether farmers are able to adapt their cropping practices to mitigate these impacts.

Stan Jones

Associate Professor

Landscape Architecture

Associate Professor Jones' work focuses upon the issues of inclusive design and social justice and how they impact both design processes and the physical places we help to create. Through his teaching, research and writing, Jones works to clarify how issues pertaining to landscape construction, technology, sustainability, process and form can and should be impacted by a deeper understanding of how the decisions we make as design and planning professionals impact the ability of people to take part in the life of vibrant, healthy landscapes, be they urban, rural, or wild.

Maria Carmen Lemos

Professor

Environmental Justice, Environmental Policy and Planning, Climate and Energy

Maria Carmen Lemos' broad research interests are related to climate adaptation and the role of knowledge in building adaptive capacity.  She is particularly interested in understanding: (a) the co-production of science and decision-making and the creation of actionable knowledge; (b) the intersection between development and climate, especially concerning the relationship between anti-poverty programs and risk management; (c) the use of climate information in building adaptive capacity in different sectors (e.g. drought planning, water management, agriculture, and urban planning); and (d) the impact of technocratic decision-making on issues of democracy and equity.

Lemos was a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC-AR5) and the Fourth US National Climate Assessment (NCA4), contribute to IPCC-AR4, and has served in a number of the US National Research Council of the National Academies of Sciences committees including Restructuring Federal Climate Research to Meet the Challenges of Climate Change (2007 and 2009), America Climate Choice Science Panel (2010) and the Board on Environmental Change and Society (2008-2014) and the Council Committee to Advise the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP)—(2011-13).

Thomas Lyon

Dow Professor of Sustainable Science, Technology, and Commerce

Environmental Policy and Planning, Sustainable Systems

Tom Lyon is the Dow Professor of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce. His research and teaching interests include environmental information disclosure and greenwash; corporate environmental strategy; environmental NGOs; voluntary environmental agreements; government regulation of business; industrial organization; and energy and the environment.

Paul Mohai

Professor

Environmental Justice, Environmental Policy and Planning

Professor Mohai’s teaching and research interests are focused on environmental justice, public opinion and the environment, and influences on environmental policy making. He is a founder of the Environmental Justice Program at the University of Michigan and a major contributor to the growing body of quantitative research examining disproportionate environmental burdens and their impacts on low income and people of color communities. In 1990, he co-organized with Dr. Bunyan Bryant the “Michigan Conference on Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards”, which was credited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as one of two events bringing the issue of Environmental Justice to the attention of the Agency. He is author or co-author of numerous articles, books, and reports focused on race and the environment, including “Environmental Racism: Reviewing the Evidence”, “Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards”, “Toxic Waste and Race at Twenty”, and “Which Came First, People or Pollution?”. His current research involves national level studies examining the causes of environmental disparities and the role environmental factors play in accounting for racial and socioeconomic disparities in health. Through a grant from the Kresge Foundation, he is also examining pollution burdens around public schools and the links between such burdens and student performance and health.

Professor Mohai is a past member of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (2007-2013). He is currently a member of the Governor’s Environmental Justice Work Group charged with developing an Environmental Justice Plan for Michigan. He is also currently a member of the Advisory Board of the Global Environmental Justice Movement Project (ENVJUSTICE) which is documenting and mapping environmental justice conflicts around the world (http://www.envjustice.org/). Professor Mohai has provided testimony on environmental justice to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1993 and 1999, the U.S. Senate in 2007, and the Michigan Civil Rights Commission in 2016.

Joan Iverson Nassauer

Professor

Environmental Policy and Planning, Landscape Architecture, Water, Cities, the Built Environment, and Mobility

Joan Iverson Nassauer is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Landscape and Urban Planning. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects (1992), Fellow of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (2007), Distinguished Practitioner of Landscape Ecology in the US (1998), and was named Distinguished Scholar by the International Association of Landscape Ecology (2007). She develops and tests ecological designs for their cultural sustainability in human-dominated landscapes, with a long-time emphasis on watershed and water infrastructure design and management.  Her teaching and research apply this approach to metropolitan and agricultural landscapes – ranging from continental scale implications of agricultural practices to neighborhood scale implications of green stormwater infrastructure.

Brendan O'Neill

Research Scientist

Conservation Ecology, Conservation & Restoration

Brendan O’Neill, PhD, conducts research on soil systems and terrestrial microbial ecology. Soils are vital ecosystems, not only for their role in food production, but also for their importance to global carbon and water cycles other biogeochemical processes. Soil microbes carry out many of the processes that make soil so critical to sustainability, including regulation of greenhouse gases. O’Neill’s work includes basic research into the formation and function of soil microbial communities, the linkages between terrestrial ecosystem management and water resources, and the role of soil ecology in promoting sustainable development.

Ivette Perfecto

George Willis Pack Professor

Conservation Ecology, Environmental Justice, Food

I am the George W. Pack Professor of Ecology, Natural Resources and Environment. My research focuses on biodiversity and arthropod-mediated ecosystem services in rural and urban agriculture. I also work on spatial ecology of the coffee agroecosystem and am interested more broadly on the links between small-scale sustainable agriculture, biodiversity and food sovereignty. I am co-author of four books, Breakfast of Biodiversity,  Nature’s Matrix: Linking Agriculture, Conservation and Food Sovereignty, and Coffee Agroecology, and Ecological Complexity and Agroecology.

My recent research is related to ecosystem services in agroforestry systems in Mexico and Puerto Rico. In Mexico my lab is investigating how local level multi-species interactions generate autonomous pest control in agroecosystems using coffee agroforests as a model system. We are also interested in critical transitions within the pest systems in coffee. In collaboration with John Vandermeer (University of Michigan) and Stacy Philpott (University of California-Santa Cruz) I established a 45-hectare plot in a shaded organic coffee farm in Chiapas, Mexico, and am conducting research on complex ecological interactions among pests, diseases and natural enemies. In Puerto Rico I collaborate with John Vandermeer and Javier Lugo (University of Puerto Rico, Utuado) in a project that examines tradeoffs and synergies among ecosystem services from coffee farms within the Model Forest of Puerto Rico. This project also investigates how ecosystem services (coffee and food provisioning, conservation of biodiversity, pest control, pollination and carbon storate) respond to local and landscape level factors.  In collaboration with Luis Garcia-Barrios from ECOSUR-San Cristobal (Mexico) I am also developing games to help farmers and students better understand ecological complexity in agroecosystems. After Hurricane Maria, we started a research project examining the resistance and resilience of coffee agroecosystems in the central mountainous region of Puerto Rico. Also, in collaboration with Casa Pueblo, a grassroots community organization, and Boricuá, a network of agroecological farmers in Puerto Rico, we are investigating how gasification, using biomass from farm residues and the trees knocked down by the hurricane, could de use to create a hybrid micro-grid that uses solar energy and syngas. We are also investigating the potential impact of the biochar generated through the gasification process on soil properties, plant growth and crop yield.

Teaching Interests:

I teach “Globalization and its Discontent: Struggles for Food, Water and Energy” (Environ 270), Diverse Farming Systems (NRE 553), and Field Ecology (NRE 556). In my courses I like to challenge students to think for themselves. Most of my courses have a strong Latin American flavor because I am from Latin America (Puerto Rico) and I conduct research in Latin America (Mexico, Mesoamerica and Puerto Rico). Most of my courses are interdisciplinary and are taught from a social justice perspective. I teach undergraduate courses in sustainable development and globalization, and the agroecology and political ecology of food systems, a graduate course in field ecology, a graduate course in diverse farming systems, and graduate seminars on topics that range from conservation in fragmented habitats to food sovereignty.

Tony Reames

Assistant Professor

Environmental Justice, Environmental Policy and Planning, Sustainable Systems, Climate and Energy

As a multidisciplinary scholar, with degrees in engineering and social science, Assistant Professor Reames' research agenda seeks to connect the areas of technological advancement, the policy process, and social equity. His research extends the environmental justice scholarship to focus on energy justice. He is currently exploring disparities in residential energy generation, consumption, and affordability- focusing on the production and persistence of inequality by race, class, and place.

Paul Seelbach

Professor of Practice

Conservation Ecology, Water

Professor Seelbach's experiences bridge the academic study of aquatic ecosystems to its application across a range of resource management agencies. He has worked for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Fisheries Division as Research Scientist and Statewide Research Director; for the USGS Great Lakes Science Center, as Coastal Ecosystems Branch Chief; for the Great Lakes Commission as Senior Science Advisor; and currently serves the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Office of the Great Lakes, as Senior Fellow. He has helped with major initiatives regarding watershed assessment and management, ecological flows and water allocation policy, water resources monitoring, coastal zone management, and revitalization of Areas of Concern.

Regarding science, Paul applies a landscape-ecology approach to understanding the structure and function of riverine and nearshore ecosystems. He is interested in system elements such as: spatial heterogeneity and context, scales and hierarchy, driving processes, and the human footprint.  Regarding aquatic practice, Paul is interested in promoting effective knowledge transfer to management and governance decision processes and in nurturing development of professional and leadership skills.

Dorceta E. Taylor

James E. Crowfoot Collegiate Professor; Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Environmental Justice, Environmental Policy and Planning, Food

In 2020, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) identified Professor Dorceta Taylor as one of the six people continuing Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy through her work. Professor Taylor's research interests include urban agriculture, food access, and food insecurity.  She was the principal investigator on a U.S. Department of Agriculture project that examined food access in Michigan.  The food access in Michigan project assessed disparities in access to healthy foods by examining the prevalence of supermarkets, grocery stores, farmer’s markets, liquor stores, gas stations, pharmacies, and other food outlets.  The study also looked at emergency food assistance at soup kitchens and shelters.  Journal articles such as, “Food Availability and the Food Desert Frame in Detroit: An Overview of the City’s Food System” (Environmental Practice), and “Black Farmers in the U.S. and Michigan:  Longevity, Empowerment, and Food Sovereignty”  (Journal of African American Studies), exemplify this work.

Dr. Taylor is a leading expert in the field of institutional diversity and workforce dynamics in the environmental sector.  She published an influential report in 2014 entitled The State of Diversity in Environmental Organizations:  Mainstream NGOs, Foundations, and Government Agencies. Professor Taylor is very engaged in diversity work.  Taylor is the director of two pathway programs to help underrepresented students embark on careers in environmental organizations.  She directs the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program at Michigan as well as the Environmental Fellows Program.  She is a renowned environmental historian who published the award-winning 2009 book, The Environment and the People in American Cities (Duke University Press).  Another of her books, Toxic Communities:  Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility (NYU Press, 2014) is recognized as one of the ten most influential books on climate change by Riot Books.  Her latest book is Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection: Social Inequality and the Rise of the American Conservation Movement (Duke University Press, 2016).

Brian Weeks

Assistant Professor

Conservation Ecology, Conservation & Restoration, Emerging Theme

Brian Weeks is joining SEAS on September 1 as an assistant professor, with courtesy appointments in LSA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB), as well as with the U-M Museum of Zoology. He is a conservation ornithologist and an evolutionary ecologist who studies the assembly of biological communities, and how different assembly histories can impact biotic responses to global change.Since 2017, Weeks has been at U-M, as a postdoctoral research fellow in EEB, and a postdoctoral fellow at the Museum of Zoology. He integrates his training in systematics and community ecology to examine community-level biotic responses to global change. In his research, he asks whether differences in the assembly histories of communities have altered their ecologies, with a focus on their vulnerability. Weeks’ research is focused on the birds of the Solomon Islands, and integrates field biology, molecular phylogenetics, and collections-based comparative morphology.

Ming Xu

Director, China Programs; Associate Professor

Environmental Policy and Planning, Sustainable Systems

Ming Xu is an Associate Professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability and in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research focuses on the broad fields of sustainable engineering and industrial ecology. At the University of Michigan, he is a core faculty member in the Center for Sustainable Systems, co-directs the Graduate Certificate Program in Industrial Ecology, and currently serves as the Director of China Programs in School for Environment and Sustainability. He teaches Environmental Footprinting and Input-Output Analysis (EAS 573) and Systems Thinking for Sustainable Development and Enterprise (EAS 550/Strategy 566). He received the Robert A. Laudise Medal from International Society for Industrial Ecology for “outstanding achievement in industrial ecology by a researcher under the age of 36” in 2015 and the US National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award in 2016. Currently he serves as the President of Chinese Society for Industrial Ecology and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Resources, Conservation & Recycling (2017 Impact Factor: 5.12). He was elected to Chair the 2022 Gordon Research Conference on Industrial Ecology.

Donald R. Zak

Arthur F. Thurnau Professor; Burton V. Barnes Collegiate Professor of Ecology

Conservation Ecology, Conservation & Restoration

Don Zak holds a joint appointment in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, College of Literature, Science, and Arts. His research investigates links between the composition and function of soil microbial communities and the influence of microbial activity on ecosystem-level processes. This work draws on ecology, microbiology, and biochemistry and is focused at several scales of understanding, ranging from the molecular to the ecosystem scale. Current research centers on understanding the link between plant and microbial activity within terrestrial ecosystems, and the influence climate change may have on these dynamics. Teaching includes courses in soil ecology and ecosystem ecology.