Profiles

Paivi Abernethy focuses primarily on various aspects in intersections of health, climate change, cumulative impacts of resource extraction, toxicology, water, food systems, and increasing community resilience. She is especially interested in children’s environmental health (life course approach to chronic disease prevention) and studying health-centered environmental co-governance – particularly in Indigenous communities.

Jean Andrey's research is concerned with the implications of climate change for transportation infrastructure and operations. The core of her research focuses on risk estimation and vulnerability assessment. Over time, she begun to focus more on sustainability issues and on the challenge of creating transportation systems, and indeed cities, that are both safe and environmentally sustainable.

Derek Armitage studies the human dimensions of environmental change (local to global) and emerging forms of environmental governance. His research interests include management and governance of aquatic systems (coastal-marine and freshwater), human dimensions of environmental change, social-ecological systems, and resilience.

Nandita Basu studies the role humans play in modifying water availability and quality through changing land use and climate, providing innovative solutions to water sustainability challenges. Her research interests include contaminant fate and transport, watershed biogeochemistry and land use change, environmental and ecosystem hydrology, ecosystem (including wetland) restoration, human impacts on the environment, and water resource sustainability.

Chris Bauch's research centers on applying mathematics to real-world problems in infectious diseases, ecology, human-environment systems, behaviour, and sustainability. His study systems include forest-grassland ecosystem mosaics, forest pest infestations, childhood vaccine scares, and influenza vaccination, among others.

Steven Bednarski's research interests include ​medieval history, social history, criminal history, gender history, and environmental history.

Peter Berry actively participates with Canadian and international researchers in efforts to better understand climate change risks to health and well-being and to prepare individuals, communities and health systems for future impacts. 

Joel Blit's research interests are in international trade, economics of innovation, multinational corporations, boundaries of the firm, institutions, green patents, and carbon pricing systems (tax, cap and trade).

Philip Boyle's research is in security, resilience, policing, urban governance, mega-event security, emergencies and disasters, public safety, and organized crime.

Dillion Browne's research interests are in the influence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), trauma, and socioeconomic status on human development; the development, evaluation, and implementation of evidence-based interventions for children and whole families who are struggling with mental health and developmental challenges, particularly in settings of trauma and adversity; migrant and refugee mental health. 

Sarah Burch is an expert in transformative responses to climate change at the community scale, innovative strategies for making progress on sustainability, and the unique contributions that small businesses can make to this solving this complex challenge.

Zahid Butt's research interests focus on syndemics of infectious diseases, infectious disease epidemiology, spatial epidemiology, global health, big data analytics, and public health informatics.

Angela Carter's research highlights the ecological and political-economic risks of fossil fuel dependence while advancing new policy measures to wind down fossil fuel extraction and production. Working alongside a community of scholars and policy advocates, she aims to reimagine Canadian and international climate policy.

Trevor Charles' research interests include plant-microbe interactions, symbiotic nitrogen fixation, functional metagenomics, bacterial genome engineering, synthetic biology, bioplastics and bioproducts, and circular bioeconomy.

Amelia Clarke studies deep decarbonization in cities, sustainability strategies, corporate social and environment​al responsibility, collaborative strategic management, cross-sector partnerships, and youth impact.

David Clausi's research interests lie in computer vision, digital image processing, pattern recognition, remote sensing systems, sports analytics, sea ice monitoring, artificial intelligence, machine learning, satellite imagery and signal processing.

Simon Glauser is the managing director of the Waterloo Climate Institute. He oversees the strategic planning and operations, and the development of the organization’s membership and partnerships.

Natalie Heldsinger is the communications officer at the Waterloo Climate Institute. She has a background in Communication Studies and French (BA) and Environmental Studies (MES). Natalie is responsible for creating communications content, disseminating member research, organizing events, and supporting press releases and media requests for the Climate Institute.  

Chantelle Verhey is a data steward for the Canadian Cryospheric Information Network/Polar Data Catalogue (PDC). She has a Masters of Science in Environmental Management from the University of Reading in the UK. As part of her work with the PDC, Chantelle is collaborating with the Canadian Consortium for Arctic Data Interoperability work on progressing polar semantics.

Greg Vey is the Director of Research Data Strategy for the Waterloo Climate Institute as well as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management, at the University of Waterloo. His role involves the strategic planning of data architecture and infrastructure, with particular attention to data discovery and interoperability. He oversees operations for the Polar Data Catalogue and Canadian Cryospheric Information Network, which involve strong cross-institutional collaborations through initiatives such as the Canadian Consortium for Arctic Data Interoperability.

Arfa Aijazi is a faculty member in the School of Architecture and the Architectural Engineering program at the University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on climate change adaptation and resilience in architectural design, particularly concerning extreme temperatures.  

Waleed Qaisar Ashfaq is the Information Systems Specialist for the Polar Data Catalogue, hosted at the University of Waterloo. He supports Polar Data Catalogue systems and software and is the technical lead for the OpenDAP initiative at the Waterloo Climate Institute.

Dipanjan Basu is a geotechnical engineer with diverse interest in mechanics, mathematics, numerical methods, renewable energy, and sustainability. His current research focus is on geothermal energy, soil structure interaction, life cycle assessment, and pile foundations. 

Marta Berbés-Blázquez is part of the University of Waterloo's Future Cities, a highly transdisciplinary initiative to imagine and co-create resilient urban futures in Canada. She brings strength and interests in environmental justice, resilience thinking, participatory action research, and foresight methods. 

Jennifer Clary-Lemon is interested in the areas of writing theory and pedagogy, material rhetorics, environmental rhetorics, methods and methodology, and rhetorics of location and place. Her current research examines infrastructural entanglements of humans and nonhumans as material rhetorical arguments, focusing on the Species at Risk Act and mandated recovery strategies for listed species.

Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger's focus is on international law and governance related to climate change adaptation, mitigation and finance, natural resources, investment, trade and the green economy, among other sustainable development challenges.

Rodrigo Costa’s research investigates how communities' physical, economic, and social systems interact to create disaster risk and exacerbate socioeconomic and racial inequalities.

James Craig's research focuses on the development and application of improved methods for modeling surface water, groundwater, heat transport, discontinuous permafrost, and the surface water / groundwater interface.

Neil Craik studies the role of procedural obligations in governance structures addressing transboundary and global commons environmental issues, the intersection of international and domestic environmental policy, climate and geoengineering governance and environmental impact assessment.

Peter Crank's research seeks to address questions of modelling urban spaces to understand the impact urban climate mitigation strategies have on the thermal environment as well as on all facets of human health (from physical heat stress to psychological disorders). His research team uses physical and applied climatology skills, data analytics, computer science, and instrumentation to study the impacts of a changing climate on individuals and the local environment.

Eric Croiset's research interests include ​reaction engineering, solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), syngas/hydrogen production, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), process simulation, reactions in supercritical water, green reaction engineering, large scale optimization of energy systems, and CO2 capture from large point sources.

​Simon Dalby's research interests are in environmental security, climate change, geopolitics, global security, and political economy.

Kyle Daun, an expert in radiative transfer and optical diagnostics, is helping the Canadian oil and gas sector deploy spectroscopic techniques for quantifying methane emissions. His work focuses on optical gas imaging using infrared cameras and hyperspectral imaging.

Hans De Sterck studies ​large-scale scientific computing, multilevel numerical linear algebra methods, numerical methods for PDEs, novel platforms for scientific computing including GPUs and clouds, and computational fluid dynamics.

Peter Deadman's research focus is on land use change, agent based models, wetland vegetation models, climate change impacts on water resources, enterprise GIS, and geodatabase design.

Tonya DelSontro’s research focus is to advance our understanding of how human activities and climate change alter aquatic carbon cycles and greenhouse gas budgets. She integrates field-based system analyses and experimental laboratory work to define and predict anthropogenic impacts on freshwater systems’ greenhouse dynamics from local and regional to global scales.

Chris Derksen studies the state, variability, and change in the cryosphere, including the role in the climate system.

Jose Di Bella is the manager of research and partnerships at the Waterloo Climate Institute. Jose works closely with the Institutes’ researchers, partners and collaborators to advance community engaged research. He also leads the Institute’s research development strategy and knowledge mobilization programs. Jose’s experience includes a significant international focus on the social and economic aspects of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction, as well as the design and implementation of climate and sustainability strategies. Jose is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the department of Geography and Environmental Management.

Goretty Dias' research focuses is on life cycle assessment, agriculture and ecosystems, bioenergy and bioeconomy, greenhouse gases, and renewable energy systems.

Brent Doberstein's research interests include environmental and resource management in developing countries, hazard mitigation and disaster risk reduction, climate change/hazards connections, and institutional capacity building.

Warren Dodd's research interests are in social and ecological determinants of global health and development, migration and health, community food security, healthcare and social service access, and climate change and health.

Christine Dow's research focuses are glacial hydrology, ice dynamics, subglacial hydrology modelling, surging glaciers, Antarctic ice shelf stability, geophysical analyses of subglacial systems, and in situ data collection from Yukon glaciers.

Michael Drescher’s research interests include the social psychology of private landowner conservation behaviours, socio-economic drivers of land use change, natural and cultural heritage landscape planning, environmental justice and equity, institutional analysis of green-blue infrastructure approaches, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and urban ecology.

Claude Duguay's main research interests are in the areas of Arctic hydro-climatology, lake/cryosphere-atmosphere interactions, remote sensing, and numerical modeling. He is the founding director of the Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change.

Amr ElAlfy studies deep decarbonization strategies and sustainability transitions for corporations and municipalities. He also works on Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) frameworks by utilizing various modelling and observation techniques to better understand climate patterns and their impacts on the environment and society.

​Ali Elkamel looks at process systems engineering, computer-aided product formulation and design, systems biology, carbon management, energy and environmental systems, optimization of oil, gas, petroleum refining and petrochemical operations, process modeling, and simulation and optimization of complex systems.

Susan Elliott's research interests are environment and health, the global environment, urban social geography, and philosophy and method in the social sciences.

Monica Emelko's research interests include water treatment, wildfire, water quality, pathogens, climate change, filtration, land disturbance, environmental and water resources, water and land management, nanoparticle removal during drinking water and wastewater treatment, quantitative microbial risk assessment, water protection and smart infrastructure.

Elizabeth English focuses are amphibious architecture, sustainable flood mitigation, climate change adaptation, flood-resilient housing for indigenous populations and vulnerable low-income communities, historic structures and traditional cultures, community resilience and resilience metrics, wind effects on buildings, hurricane damage prevention, adaptive flood risk reduction, disaster management and relief.

Christian's research focuses on metabolic engineering, systems biology, industrial bioengineering, and the circular economy. He joined the University of Waterloo from the start-up world, where he developed novel microbial pathways to vaporize waste products such as CO2, its reduced derivatives, and plastics, including the world's first bio-based glycolic acid produced from a waste stream.

Mathieu Feagan is a critical interdisciplinary scholar using the framework of ecological consciousness as different ways of knowing to build capacity for social-ecological-technological transformation. Matt works across scholar-activist-practitioner communities, connecting local action to global environmental change to support just and sustainable transitions. 

Blair Feltmate's research is about identifying the additive value of sustainable development on an industry-specific basis and establishing a practical, meaningful and cost-effective climate change adaptation program for Canada.

​Chris Fletcher's research interests are climate modelling, dynamics and change, extratropical teleconnections and seasonal-to-decadal climate variability, land-ocean-atmosphere interaction, and snow albedo feedback.

Dustin Garrick has expertise in water and environmental governance with a focus on property rights, institutions and markets. He has twenty years of experience in environmental management with a focus on markets and governance innovations to address resource scarcity and sustainability challenges. 

Bryan Grimwood's research is focused on tourism and Indigenous Peoples, tourism ethics and responsibility, northern landscapes, and outdoor experiential education.

Roberto Guglielmi's research addresses problems in control and optimization of large-scale dynamics, described by ordinary or partial differential systems of evolution, with applications to the optimization of utility distribution over networks, heat transfer phenomena in the presence of crack and fractures, control of epidemics, reinforcement learning methods.

Grant Gunn's research interests aim to improve the retrievals of physical components of the Cryosphere, including permafrost (active layer thickness, timing of thaw/refreeze) and ice parameters in sub-Arctic and Arctic environments. His research applies emerging technologies including: airborne/spaceborne synthetic aperture radar, high-performance cloud computing (ex. Google Earth Engine), interferometry, polarimetric decomposition, thermodynamic modeling, and the collection of field variables to validate these remote observations. 

Roland Hall ​studies aquatic ecology, paleolimnology and multivariate statistics to assess effects of multiple stressors (nutrients, acidification, climate change, river regulation, species invasions) on lakes, wetlands and reservoirs.

Daniel Henstra's focuses are public administration, public policy, local government, federalism and multilevel governance, emergency management, and climate change adaptation.

Götz Hoeppe's research interests include anthropology of science, technology and digital media, environmental anthropology; ethnography, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, and responsible research and innovation.

Thomas Homer-Dixon studies the complex threats to global security, causes of violent conflict, climate change, energy science, and public policy, sources of societal innovation, and modelling of ideological change.

Laura Hug seeks to define microbial diversity and function at contaminated sites using culture-based and culture-independent methods, generating a blueprint of which species are there and which pathways are active. Her research expands our understanding of the tree of life, while simultaneously developing solutions to address the impacts of human activities on the environment.

Thy Huynh is a graduate research assistant at the Waterloo Climate Institute, working on a project to facilitate interdisciplinary communications and collaboration while advancing the groundwork for interdisciplinary grant proposals. Thy is a recent graduate from the master’s program in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability and is interested in exploring the intersections of public health and climate change.

Thy Huynh is a Project Coordinator at the Waterloo Climate Institute supporting a variety of research projects, administration, and event logistics. Thy is passionate about creating a positive impact at the intersections of equity/environmental justice, climate change, and public health. Through the recent completion of an MES at the University of Waterloo, she is committed to uplifting marginalized voices and lived experiences to the climate and health policy landscape while mobilizing and translating this knowledge into impactful local action.

Craig Janes' research interests include human-environment interactions, social inequities and health, global health governance, and maternal and child health.

​Peter Johnson's focuses are the Geoweb, open data, mobile technology, public participation GIS, community-based geomatics, and geospatial technology in planning and government.

Allison Kelly studies the roles of shame, self-criticism, and self-compassion in the development, maintenance, and remission of psychopathology, especially eating disorders; Interventions and therapist behaviours that can reduce shame and self-criticism, and increase self-compassion; Fears of self-compassion and outward compassion, and how best to target these barriers in people with eating disorders; The social contexts that facilitate versus undermine self-compassion, compassion for others, healthy body image, and intuitive eating.

Richard Kelly's research interests are remote sensing, snow hydrology, snow climatology, geospatial modelling of snow, and citizen science.

Professor Kendall uses geochemistry to:
develop innovative geochemical methods that can serve as process tracers for petroleum systems, ore mineralization, and biogeochemical cycles;
learn more about how mineral and petroleum deposits form and improve exploration strategies for these important resources;
reconstruct the history of atmosphere and ocean oxygenation through time and its relationship to biological evolution, seawater chemistry and natural resource deposits.

Luna Khirfan's research interests are community climate change adaptation, urban design and place making, international development and comparative planning, participatory planning, historic preservation and cultural resource management, and museum studies.

Connor Khoja is the Outreach and Project Assistant at the Waterloo Climate Institute. He supports knowledge mobilization, student and member outreach, and climate change initiatives like policy briefs and research projects. Connor is currently pursuing a BSc in Physics and Astronomy, with an interest in the connections between climate change and astronomy.

Joyce Kim is primarily interested in studying human-building interactions and the role of technologies to augment occupant performance and building energy efficiency. Her research leverages IoT and data-driven analytics to predict human comfort and behaviour, personalize occupant experience in the built environment and enable intelligent building design and operation. Her research interests also include smart grid technologies and utility cost optimizations.

Sharon Kirkpatrick studies nutrition,food policy, the environmental sustainability of current eating patterns, food environments, and food access among marginalized populations.

Anna Klinkova's research interests are nanomaterials for alternative energy and catalysis, CO2 electroreduction, electroorganic CO2 fixation, and technoeconomic and environmental assessment for emerging CO2 conversion technologies.

Kevin Lamb's focuses are nonlinear waves, internal gravity waves and surface water waves, hydrodynamic instabilities and mixing, physical oceanography and limnology, coupling of hydrodynamic and bio-geochemical processes in lakes, and computational fluid dynamics.

Brendon Larson's research interests are rethinking the conservation of biodiversity in the context of global change, social dimensions of biodiversity conservation, and metaphor, environmental science and society.

Ellsworth LeDrew's focuses are climate-cryosphere interactions using passive microwave imagery and numerical climate models, and data management, discovery and archiving for Polar Environmental Science.

​Hyung-Sool Lee's areas of research include production of bio-energy (electricity, H2, and CH4) and bio-chemicals from biomass including microbial electrochemical cells, wastewater treatment including nutrient recovery from organic waste and wastewater, thermodynamic/kinetic analyses of microbial metabolisms in engineered and natural systems, anaerobic membrane bioreactors including integration of anaerobic digestion with membrane separation, and anaerobic oxidation of methane, especially as part of the global carbon cycle.

Nathan Lemphers studies climate and energy governance, public policy, energy transitions, and the history of climate policy development.

Kelsey Leonard's research is concerned with ocean policy, water policy, earth law, Indigenous law, Indigenous climate change policy, Indigenous data sovereignty and ocean/coastal/marine participatory mapping.

Quinn Lewis' research broadly focuses on the process-form interactions of rivers, geomorphology, and water resources. Additionally, his research leverages state-of-the-art technology to improve our understanding of dynamic and interrelated physical processes and landforms.

​Jonathan Li's research focuses on multispectral and SAR remote sensing, laser scanning (or LiDAR), object-based image analysis, 3D urban modeling and spatial analysis, terrain analysis in hydrogeography, and geomatics solutions to disaster management.

Alana Lund studies the mechanics and dynamics of civil structures, with a focus on vibration-based techniques for structural identification. Through her research program she strives to develop robust approaches to structural health monitoring that can achieve a holistic, regional assessment of structural condition. Her research interests include structural health monitoring, vibration-based identification, uncertainty quantification, Bayesian inference, information fusion, and vulnerability and risk assessment.

Viv Maclean is the Data Specialist with the Waterloo Climate Institute working with the Canadian Cryospheric Information Network/Polar Data Catalogue (PDC). Viv has twenty years' experience in environmental data and database management. She has a background in science (B.Sc. Hons. and PgDip).

​Merrin Macrae's focuses are on biogeochemistry, hydrology, wetland science, agricultural water quality, agricultural tile drainage, and nutrient.

Michèle Martin is the training program specialist at the Waterloo Climate Institute. Her role is to support university-wide climate change educational programming, as well as to advance and coordinate external professional development and training opportunities. Michele has over thirty years' experience in sustainability and climate change education and capacity building in Canada and internationally and holds a PhD in Environmental Studies from York University. 

Cameron is an Assistant Professor at the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development. His research interests focus on urban sustainable development and the systems that give rise to both compounding vulnerability and sustainable progress in cities. In pursuit of this research interest, he has partnered with researchers, policymakers, private industry leaders and local communities on investigations into sustainable urban development across North America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. Cameron is currently working with SDSN Canada to develop an index of Sustainable Development Goal achievement in Canadian cities.

​Robert McLeman's areas of research include human dimensions of environmental change, with particular attention to the relationship between environment and human migration, rural adaptation to climatic variability and change, and fostering citizen participation in environmental science.

Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher's areas of research include science communication (especially online), environmental communication (especially related to disaster or risk society), risk communication (especially related to nuclear energy generation), and citizen science.

Colleen Mercer Clarke's research includes coastal governance, landscape architecture, land use planning, coastal climate change impacts, and climate change adaptation.

Julie Messier studies plant functional ecology, phenotypic variation and integration.

Brian Mills' areas of research are transportation, road safety, construction, weather-related injury risk, and social and economic valuation of meteorological products and services.

Carrie Mitchell's research interests include climate change and cities, gendered effects of urban services provision, and resilience theory and its application in urban planning.

Juan Moreno-Cruz's research interests include energy systems, technological change, climate policy, solar and carbon geoengineering technologies, and energy transitions.

Juan Moreno-Cruz's research interests include energy systems, technological change, climate policy, solar and carbon geoengineering technologies, and energy transitions.

Plinio Morita studies population-level surveillance using IoT data, mHealth and wearable technology design, ubiquitous sensors for smart homes, usage data and health data analytics, precision medicine, and technology for aging.

Linda Mortsch's focuses are the impacts of climate change on water resources and wetlands in Canada, climate change scenario development, and "effective" communication of climate change information.

Kirsten Müller's research interests are freshwater and marine algae, phylogeny, taxonomy, systematics, biogeography, invasive species, bloom forming algae, and evolution.

Hannah Tait Neufeld's research interests include Indigenous health and wellbeing, social and ecological determinants influencing maternal and child health, along with Indigenous food environments globally. 

Alain-Désiré Nimubona analyzes the equilibrium relationships between polluters and their abatement equipment suppliers, which constitutes the environmental industry or eco-industry. Using economic modelling, he studies the interplay between environmental and trade policies related to the eco-industry, as well as the market structure of this industry. More recently, his research interests have widened to include issues related to the adoption of abatement technologies under uncertainty and the use of green infrastructures as a solution to sustainable development. 

Jozef Nissimov's research interests include virus ecology, comparative genomics of aquatic viruses, host-virus infection dynamics, microalgal biology and physiology, biological oceanography, effects of environmental change on aquatic viruses, algal-virus interactions and co-evolution, costs and mechanisms of virus resistance in microalgae, and development of new host-virus model systems.

Gennaro Notomista's main research interests lie at the intersection of design and control of robotic systems for long-duration autonomy with applications to environmental monitoring.

Maren Oelbermann's research interests include climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, carbon sequestration and ecosystem nitrogen dynamics; the impact of climate change on plant and soil ecosystems; permaculture, biochar, biomass plantations; restoration of marginal lands; and stable isotope techniques, modeling.

Zhao Pan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo and the Principal Investigator of the Interdisciplinary Fluid Physics Lab - Pan Lab. Prior to joining Waterloo, he worked at Utah State University and Florida Center for Advanced Aero-propulsion (FCAAP, FSU) as a postdoctoral fellow. His research interests span from fundamental fluid physics (e.g., jets, bubbles, droplets, and cavitation), micro/bio-fluids, to advanced fluid flow diagnostics. Most of his studies are driven by curiosity and serve both academia and the community with creative ideas and broader social impact.

Dawn Parker studies the modelling land-use, transportation, and environmental interactions. Her research explores planning for sustainable cities. Her research interests include planning sustainable cities, residential land markets, agent-based modeling, and complexity theory. 

Paul Parker studies renewable energy policy, sustainability, residential retrofits and carbon migration, green economy and local economic development.

Fatima Patka is an undergraduate Co-op research assistant at the Waterloo Climate Institute. She is responsible for supporting the Climate Leaders Program in both planning and implementation. She has a background in organizing leadership workshops for students.  She is currently completing a B.A.Sc. in Environmental Engineering.

Richard Petrone research focuses are ecohydrology, hydrometeorology, climatology, micrometeorology, climate change, biogeochemistry, greenhouse gases, reclamation, landuse change, and forest hydrology.

Francis Poulin's research focuses are geophysical fluid dynamics, stochastic differential equations, biological fluid dynamics, and computational mathematics.

Sneha Praveen is a volunteer at the Waterloo Climate Institute. She is responsible for supporting on-campus engagement, climate change mitigation projects and the development of educational resources. Sneha received her undergraduate degree at the University of Waterloo in Environment, Resources, and Sustainability and is currently in the Master of Climate Change program.

Jonathan Price's research interests include peatland/wetland hydrology, peatland construction and restoration, water and solute flux dynamics, and hydrometric, geochemical and remote sensing techniques.

Omar Ramahi's research interests are radiating systems, theoretical and computational electromagnetics, electromagnetic compatibility, interference and electronic packaging, biomedical applications of electromagnetics, photonics, material measurements, antennas, microwaves and photonics, medical imaging, scanning, energy harvesting/bio-energy, renewable energy, sensors and devices, and wireless communications/networking.

Fereidoun Rezanezhad research investigates the effects of ongoing and future climate and land use changes and management practices on the fate of carbon, nutrients and contaminants, as well as on biogeochemical fluxes between the atmosphere, hydrosphere and geosphere.

Derek Robinson's research interests include land-use and land-cover change, land-management and the carbon cycle, land grabs, land policy, agent-based modelling and geographical information systems.

Ian Rowlands areas of research include managing energy use effectively and sustainably, Ontario residential energy consumption, renewable electricity in Canada and U.S. solar energy.

Horatiu Rus studies international trade, environmental and natural resource economics, international development, and political economy.

Michelle Rutty's research interests include tourism, environment and sustainability, understanding the decision-making process and behavioural response of tourists to environmental change, assessing climate change risks and opportunities for tourism operators and destinations, and developing solutions to build a more environmentally sustainable tourism sector.

Rebecca Saari's research interests include air pollution, greenhouse gases, and trade; air quality impacts and benefits under energy and climate policy; health impacts of air pollution under future climate; environmental inequality; pollution and policy impacts by income group; and integrated economic, health impact, and air quality modeling.

Armaghan Salehian’s research interests include smart materials for sensing-actuation and energy harvesting applications, vibrations and dynamics, cable-harnessed structures modal and vibrations analysis, vibrations and control of space structures, inflatable space structures dynamic analysis, and UAV payload design for sea ice and soil moisture measurements using GNSS reflectometry to monitor climate change.

Jerika Sanderson is a graduate research assistant at the Waterloo Climate Institute supporting the “Climate Change Education” project. Jerika is a PhD candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature, where her research is informed by her interdisciplinary background in English and biological sciences. She is especially interested in interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to teaching, and she has instructed the course Communication in the Sciences and co-instructed the Wicked Problem of Climate Change course.

Sherry Schiff studies watershed biogeochemistry and the impact of nutrients and climate change on aquatic ecosystems.

Vanessa Schweizer's research focuses are cross-disciplinary knowledge integration and the design of scenarios for the human dimensions of large-scale environmental change; long-term decision-making such as forecasting and discontinuities; and the influence of occupational, interpersonal, and cultural conflicts on climate change attitudes.

Andrea Scott's research focuses include retrieval of sea ice quantities from remote sensing data to improve our knowledge of the state of sea ice in the Arctic, investigation of information content of observational data and data fusion/data assimilation methods, and novel data-driven approaches (eg. convolutional neural networks) to extract sea ice information from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery.

Daniel Scott's focuses are climate change and tourism/recreation, sustainable tourism, climate change impacts and adaptation, as well as climate change and protected areas management.

Steffanie Scott studies agro-food systems sustainability (organic and ecological food production and alternative food networks; urban food systems/urban food security and producer-consumer connections; sustainable diets; small producer participation in food supply chains; local food systems /local food economies; property rights, land policy, and inequalities; rural development, livelihoods, governance, and agrarian transition; campus food systems), environment-development interfaces, sustainable communities, and sustainability transitions.

Mark Seasons looks at urban and regional planning, strategic planning, policy and program evaluation, local economic development, and public administration.

David Simakov's research interests include biochemical and biomedical engineering, emerging catalytic materials for CO2 activation, nano-structure catalysts for thermo-catalytic conversion of CO2, reactor design for CO2 conversion into renewable natural gas and methanol, system design for production of renewable synthetic fuels from biogas, emerging catalytic nano-materials, heterogeneous catalysis, Green Reaction Engineering, reactor design, and renewable synthetic fuels.

Simron Singh conducts socio-metabolic research on small islands. As an industrial ecologist, he tracks material and energy flows through island systems: what and how much resources are locally produced, imported, transformed, used, stocked and discarded. His research aims to inform science and policy on ways small islands can achieve resource and energy security, meet social and economic goals while building resilient infrastructure to endure climate change.

Kelly Skinner's research interests include community-based health and social projects related to food, nutrition, food security, and the broader context of food systems and environments. 

James Sloan is the Founding Principal of S&A Research, an atmospheric science consulting practice.

Marek Stastna's areas of research are ​stratified fluid dynamics in lakes and the coastal oceans, the climate dynamics, and wave dynamics in porous media.

Mike Stone's research focuses on land use change and its impact on surface water quality in natural and built environments.

Maria Strack's research interests include the interactions between ecology, hydrology, biogeochemistry and soil properties in wetland ecosystems, peatland greenhouse gas fluxes in both natural and disturbed ecosystem, and peatland methane dynamics including both fluxes and subsurface storage.

Larry Swatuk looks at the ​political ecology of natural resources governance and management, with a particular focus on water in Africa.

Imre Szeman's main areas of research are in environmental communication, energy justice, critical theory, and cultural studies.

Chao Tan areas of research are green energy, bioenergy, air pollution control, air cleaning, indoor air quality, sustainable buildings, aerosol, nanosafety, alternative fuels, energy harvesting/bio-energy, power systems, nanotechnology, renewable energy, nano-instrumentation, value-added recovery, hydrothermal conversion, hydrogen production, biomass and waste management, nanoaerosol filtration, nanoaerosol measurement, nanoaerosol generation and characterization, post-combustion air cleaning, acidic gas absorption, diesel engine emission abatement, mass, transfer between gas-liquid system, and chemical reaction kinetics.

Pejoohan Tavassoti’s research focuses on promoting sustainability and resilience of the transportation infrastructure with a focus on an enhanced pavement engineering, design, and materials characterization framework.

Solomon Tesfamariam's research focuses on the sustainable design of tall-timber building, decision-making tools for infrastructure (asset) management and the management of civil infrastructure systems and risk-based aging infrastructure management (buried pipes, buildings, bridges, etc.).

Jason Thistlethwaite looks at innovative strategies designed to reduce the economic impacts of extreme weather and climate change within the financial sector.

Bryan Tolson's research interests include ​hydrologic model calibration, hydrology, water resources planning and management, environmental and water resources, environmental simulation model development, environmental decision-making, parallel computing, multi-objective optimization, and soft computing.

Andrew Trant's areas of research include ecological legacies associated with people occupying sites for millennia, biodiversity as a critical component for understanding how ecosystem function and biogeography.

Philippe Van Cappellen’s research focuses on the biogeochemistry of soils, sediments and aquatic ecosystems, the cycles of water, carbon, nutrients and metals, global change, geobiology, chemical hydrology, water-rock interactions and environmental modeling.

Wesley Van Wychen's research includes remote sensing (satellite imagery) and field data to observe variability in glaciers and glacier motion; the application of SAR remote sensing datasets to observe ocean processes (currents, sea ice) and monitor human activities (detection of oil spills); data management and long-term data preservation; and historical climate data rescue projects.

Michael Waite​'s focuses are turbulence in rotating stratified fluids, vortices in stratified fluids, mesoscale atmospheric dynamics, and tropical convection.

Johanna Wandel's research focuses are adaptation to climate change and community-based vulnerability assessments.

Elanor Waslander is the interim communications officer at the Waterloo Climate Institute. She is responsible for supporting communications, knowledge mobilization, events, and press releases. Elanor has over 15 years of experience working in climate and sustainability sectors building capacity, mobilizing knowledge, and engaging partnerships. She has a background in environmental science (BES), education (B.Ed), and studies (MES).

Olaf Weber looks at environmental and sustainable finance with a focus on sustainable credit risk management, socially responsible investment, social banking and the link between sustainability and financial performance of enterprises.

Byron Williston's focuses are environmental philosophy, the ethics of climate change and political philosophy.

Jeffrey Wilson's areas of research include economic and sustainability research, natural capital accounting, wellbeing research, indicator development, ecosystem goods and services valuation, and strategy and policy development for sustainability transitions.

Tony Wirjanto's research focuses on the intersection between statistics and econometrics. This includes financial time series with a focus on volatility modeling/forecasting and financial risk management and financial mathematics with a focus on portfolio optimization in a high-dimensional setting and on global climate change risks.

Brent Wolfe's areas of research include climate change in Canada's north, present and past hydrology of the Mackenzie Basin Deltas, paleo-environmental research, and environmental impacts on the hydrology of lakes.

Clarence Woudsma's focuses are climate change policy, emissions forecasting, impacts of climate change adaptations on freight, regulatory policy, urban freight planning, freight and land use (accessibility), transportation demand management and deregulation of transportation provision.

XiaoYu Wu’s research focuses on thermal science and explores the use of material engineering and techno-economics to develop sustainable technologies for energy conversion and chemical production.

Yimin Wu's research looks at advanced manufacturing, materials interfaces, energy materials, solar fuels, batteries, in situ multimodal characterizations, artificial intelligence, connectivity and internet of things, electronic and photonic materials, responsive materials, sensing, healthcarel, and nanotechnology.

Darren Wynes is the Project Coordinator at the Waterloo Climate Institute. He is responsible for assisting in the implementation of the Institute’s projects and activities, project administration, event logistics, and financial support. He has a background in finance and recently completed a Masters in Environmental Studies and Graduate Diploma in Climate Risk Management at UWaterloo.

Seth takes an interdisciplinary approach to research on climate change mitigation. He uses a variety of methods including surveys, randomized controlled trials, carbon accounting, and interviews, with a focus on quantitative methods. His past work examined public and expert perceptions of climate change and assessed the effectiveness of various policies in reducing transportation emissions. Looking ahead, Seth aims to provide actionable insights that enhance climate policies by making them more effective, popular, and equitable.

Linlin Xu's focuses are monitoring and mapping of Arctic sea ice and marine oil spills, machine learning, statistical and computational methods for big remote sensing data interpretation, hyperspectral imaging, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging and environmental remote sensing.

Chul Min Yeum's research interests include structural health monitoring, computer vision, machine learning, nondestructive testing and big data.

Yuki Yeung is a graduate research assistant at the Waterloo Climate Institute supporting the research project Building Disaster Resilience Across Supply Chains: A co-produced innovation model for understanding, planning and investing in climate change adaptation”. She is currently a PhD student in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management (GoHelP Lab), and completed her Bachelor of Environmental Studies and Diploma in Geographic Information Systems at the University of Waterloo (2023). Her research interests include: Climate change impacts on human health and wellbeing, and climate change adaptation.

Steven B. Young studies sustainable materials management, life-cycle assessment (LCA) and enterprise carbon management.