Climate Change Research and Action in an Era of Political Turmoil

Dr. Johanna Wandel is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies in the department of Geography and Environmental Management. Her research examines the critical relationship between humans and the environment and specifically addresses vulnerability and adaptation assessments in relation to climate change.

Dr. Charmaine Dean (Ph.D., University of Waterloo) is Vice-President, Research and International at the University of Waterloo.  In this role, she provides strategic leadership in the areas of research and innovation, commercialization, and internationalization.  She is also responsible for building strategic alliances and partnerships with other academic institutions, governments, businesses, and industries at the regional, national, federal, and international levels.

Dr. Sarah Burch is a Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management, and holds a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Sustainability Governance and Innovation. She is the Executive Director of the Waterloo Climate Institute, a Lead Author of the United Nations’ Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and helped to lead expert input into the development of Canada’s first National Adaptation Strategy. Her research uncovers transformative responses to climate change at the community scale, the political and justice dimensions of energy transitions, and the unique contributions that small businesses can make to solving these complex challenges. She leads the international partnership-based research project TRANSFORM: Accelerating sustainability entrepreneurship experiments in local spaces, and is the Director of the Sustainability Policy Research on Urban Transformations (SPROUT) Lab. 

Dr. Christine Dow is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at UWaterloo, and the Canada Research Chair in Glacier Hydrology and Ice Dynamics. Her research takes her to far-flung polar regions with field programs ranging from the ice shelves of Terra Nova Bay, Antarctica, to glaciers in the St. Elias Mountains of the Yukon Territory. Dr. Dow uses techniques such as numerical modeling, field data collection, and geophysics to examine the changes occurring to our ice sheets and glaciers in a warming climate.

Dr. Chris Fletcher is an Associate Professor and Chair of the department of Geography and Environmental Management. His research program uses computer models of the global climate system to better understand climate variability and change, primarily over North America and Europe, on timescales ranging from seasons to decades to centuries. His primary research interest is in the role of the atmospheric circulation in determining regional patterns of temperature and precipitation in past, present and future climates. His research group uses state-of-the-art computer model simulations to make projections of these expected future changes. 

Dr. Kirsten Müller is Associate Vice-President, Research Grants & Infrastructure in the Office of the Vice-President, Research and International and Professor of Biology. Her research focuses on climate change impacts on freshwater ecosystems, particularly cyanobacterial blooms and invasive algae. She is the Managing Editor of the Journal of Phycology, and an active leader in the Phycological Society of America.