Core Faculty

Kai Chan is an associate professor and Canada Research Chair (tier 2, in Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). His training spans conservation biology, ecology, evolutionary biology, policy, and ethics, and his skill sets include quantitative analysis and modeling. Kai combines these perspectives in a research program on social-ecological interactions (including human impacts on ecosystem components and processes, and ecosystem services to benefit people) to inform applied environmental ethics and ecosystem-based management. Kai leads the Conservation Collaboration in Interdisciplinary Study of Ecosystems (www.conciseresearch.net); he is a director on the board of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s BC chapter (CPAWS-BC) and a senior fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program.

To see Kai's page at ConCISE click here.

Stephanie Chang is jointly appointed in the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) and the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES). She holds a Canada Research Chair in Disaster Management and Urban Sustainability.  Her research addresses issues of community vulnerability and resilience to natural disasters. Broadly speaking, it investigates three types of questions:  What happens in disasters, and why? What can be anticipated in future disasters? And, how can disruption from disasters be effectively reduced? She has written extensively on loss estimation models for critical infrastructure systems, infrastructure interdependencies, economic evaluation of disaster mitigations, and urban disaster recovery. She is currently working on several projects related to critical infrastructure interdependencies, long-term dynamics of disaster risk, and disaster recovery and resilience.

We have labile objectives, incomplete knowledge and make decisions less rationally than we would like to believe. Dowlatabadi is Canada Research Chair & Prof in Applied Mathematics and Global Change, University of British Columbia. He is a University Fellow at Resources for the Future the, a Washington DC think tank. He is also Adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Engineering & Public Policy. He received his BSc from Edinburgh University (1980) and his PhD in physics University of Cambridge (1984). His research has focused on the interface of humans and the environment. Hadi has focused on challenges at the interface of technology, energy, environment, health and public policy. His perspective can be summarized as: Hadi has a wide range of publications from books on how to choose electricity generation technologies to different determinants of malaria in the world. He has been a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and also on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. He has over 150 peer-reviewed papers and helped 35 PhDs complete their research. In 1989 he was awarded a Warren Weaver Fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation where he co-designed the program for global environmental leadership (www.lead.org). He serves on the editorial boards of four periodicals. He is co-founder (2004) of the non-profit Offsetters Climate Neutral Society (www.offsetters.org), CTO (2007) of Green-Erg Technologies Ltd (www.green-erg.com) a founding Director (2005) of Canadian Bioenergy Corporation (www.canadianbioenergy.com) and senior advisor to an leading Canadian electric vehicle company (www.rapidelectricvehicles.com ).

Visit my homepage.

Leila Harris is currently an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability and the Center for Women's and Gender Studies at UBC. She is trained as a socio-cultural and political geographer with interest in resource issues and inequalities, gender, and developing contexts. Her research to date has focused primarily on water politics in the Middle East/ Turkey, water governance in the Global South, and gender dimensions of resource use and access. Given her focus on inequalities, her work is also strongly connected to work in political ecology, environmental justice, and gender studies.

More information: http://www.ires.ubc.ca/leila-harris/

My research interests center on ecohydrology and watershed biogeochemistry. My group conducts field-based research involving hydrometric and water quality monitoring, which we complement through GIS-based modeling, laboratory analysis and stakeholder input. The overarching goal is to leverage this research towards the development of more sustainable landuse practices and urban systems.

More details on projects, publications, group members and opportunities can be found at: http://ecohydro.ires.ubc.ca/

 

Milind Kandlikar (PhD Carnegie Mellon) is an Associate Professor at the Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability. His work focuses on the intersection of technology innovation, human development and the global environment. Dr. Kandlikar's current projects include cross-national comparisons of regulation of agricultural biotechnology; air quality in Indian cities; risks and benefits of nanotechnology; new technologies for sustainable transportation; and development and climate change. He has also published extensively on the science and policy of climate change.

Brief Biography

Tim McDaniels is a specialist in decision sciences and policy analysis, particularly in managing environmental and technology-related societal risks. His current research focuses on climate change adaptation in linked human/ ecological systems. He also has ongoing research projects concerned with building regional resilience in infrastructure systems.

Tim is a professor appointed in two graduate interdisciplinary programs at the University of British Columbia, in the College for Interdisciplinary Studies. He formerly served as the Director of the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, as the Associate Director of the School of Community and Regional Planning, and also as the Acting Principal of the College for Interdisciplinary Studies. He also served as acting Director of the Bridge program, an interdisciplinary research-training program linking public health, engineering and public policy, funded by the Canadian Institute of Heath Research.

Tim’s research addresses issues of risk management based on societal values and expert understanding. His previous work has addressed issues of values, value elicitation, risk perception, eliciting judgments from experts, and characterizing more effective approaches for managing issues of global change that cross multiple scales of governance and impact.  He has worked extensively on citizen involvement in complex policy decisions, and has designed and led successful stakeholder decision processes involving scientists, agency representatives and civil society groups. He has published articles and conducted practical research in forestry, fisheries, renewable energy, aquaculture, water management and infrastructure systems.

Tim has published over 70 articles in leading interdisciplinary science journals, along with three books and over 50 technical reports. He also has served on expert panels for the US National Academy of Sciences, NOAA, the US EPA, Health Canada and other organizations. He has participated in advisory roles for several Canadian inquiries and panels regarding risk issues. His was a co-investigator in the Climate Decision making Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, which is supported by the US National Science Foundation. He is now a co-investigator in the new Climate and Energy Decision Making Center at CMU. In 2004, he was a co-author for a NAS panel report on Research Priorities for Improving Environmental Decision-making. In 2008, he appointed to the US National Academy of Science Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change. He served as the Decision Sciences area editor of the journal Risk Analysis for five years, and is a fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis.

 

Sustainable development demands an ability to integrate knowledge about natural and human systems. These interests took me to IRES in October 2006 and it is a pleasure and honor to be the Director of such a colourful, highly professional and thriving place. Prior to my arrival to UBC, I was the founding director of the Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research at Linköping University, Sweden.

I have participated in and lead a number of interdisciplinary research and educational projects related to environmental and sustainability issues. Some of these projects have been closely tied to my own research interests, in other projects, my role has been more of the facilitator. Some projects have been interdisciplinary within the natural science sphere but most projects span the natural science-social science divide. A recent outcome is my book Interdisciplinary, environmental studies - a primer" which will be published by Blackwell and Wiley in the fall 2010. My research interests span from the biogeochemistry of chlorine in soil to the use of science in environmental policy. My most recent project is the Integrated Water and Energy Management Project (IWEP). I enjoy teaching and supervision and I have successfully supervised students in widely disparate areas. In 2011, I will teach the new undergraduate course "Applied sustainability" which is open for students in five of UBC's Faculties and conducted in close collaboration with UBC Operations. I serve on City of Vancouver's Clean Water Advisory Committee, UBC's Senate, Alternative Energy Committee and the Academic Building Needs Committee.

Home page

John Robinson is Executive Director, UBC Sustainability Initiative, and a professor with the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability, and the Department of Geography, at the University of British Columbia. In the former role he is responsible for integrating academic and operational sustainability on UBC’s Point Grey campus. His own research focuses on the intersection of climate change mitigation, adaptation and sustainability; the use of visualization, modeling and citizen engagement to explore sustainable futures; sustainable buildings and urban design; creating private/public/NGO and research sector partnerships for sustainability; and generally the intersection of sustainability, social and technological change, behaviour change, and community engagement processes. A major current project is the development of the research and partnerships programs around the new Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS), now under construction on the UBC campus.

Dr. Robinson is a member of the BC Hydro External Advisory Committee on Electricity Conservation and Efficiency, and the Program Committee of the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, on the Board of the Sustainable Cities Foundation and the Pembina Institute, a member of the Steering Group of HELIO International, and on the Editorial Boards of the journals Integrated Assessment, Ecology and Society, Building Research and Information, and the Journal of Industrial Ecology. He is a Fellow of the Trudeau Foundation and has been a Lead Author in the last three reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Terre Satterfield is Professor of Culture, Risk and the Environment. An anthropologist by training, her work concerns sustainable development in the context of debates about risk and environmental health. Her research examines a variety of environmental conflicts including logging disputes, the politics of biodiversity, First Nation interests in land management and regulatory contexts, the governance and perceived risk of new technologies (biotechnology and nanotechnology), and the social and cultural consequences of contamination. Professor Satterfield’s research is or has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Hampton Fund, the US National Science Foundation, the New Zealand Foundation for Research and Technology, the US EPA and Department of Energy, the World Health Organization, and the Getty Conservation Institute. Dr. Satterfield’s work has been published in edited collections including a recent volume entitled The Encyclopedia of Biodiversity, a volume on post-Cold War environments sponsored by the School of American Research, and such journals as Nature Nanotechnology, Society and Natural Resources, Ecological Economics, Environmental Values, Journal of Social Issues, Journal of Anthropological Research, Human Ecology Review, Ecology and Society, New Genetics and Society, and Risk Analysis. She has received awards for two of her publications, including her book, The Anatomy of a Conflict (2002); two other volumes include: Satterfield & Slovic, What’s Nature Worth; and in 2005, the Earthscan Reader in Environmental Values, Kaloff & Satterfield.