Student members

Lesley Andrade, PhD Candidate, School of Health Sciences

Research interests: public health systems, healthy eating and nutrition policy, healthy weights promotions and eating disorders/disordered eating prevention, dietary assessment methods.

Examining the consumption of low-calorie sweeteners and applying an innovative method to estimating usual intake in Canada and abroad.

Joe Battikh is a senior sustainability expert with over sixteen years of international experience in the private sector. He has a strong interest in developing corporate sustainability through economic, environmental and social development.

Marisa Beck is a PhD student in global governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA), University of Waterloo, specializing in global environmental governance. Her research focuses on the interactions between three types of complex systems — the Earth’s climate, the global economy and social value and belief systems.

Teresa Branch-Smith approaches complexity from a background in biochemistry and as a result is particularly interested in discussions about emergence that involve biology based examples. This can range from the study of protein interaction to the swarming behaviour of bees.

Christina Comeau is a PhD candidate in Social and Ecological Sustainability working under the supervision of Dr. Vanessa Schweiwer and Dr. Dan McCarthy.  She is working on trans disciplinary application of complexity science to designing and governing interventions in social and environmental systems that lead to a just and sustainable future.

Nicholas Damer is currently completing his Masters of Arts in Political Science at Carleton University and recently discovered his passion for Complexity Science as a discipline which articulates his underlying discomfort with conventional positivistic interpretations of social phenomena. He is interested in applying computational modelling and/or GIS methods to solving problems around conflict, peace building, and institutional resilience.

Clay Dasilva (PDF) is currently a PhD student in global governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo, having also obtained his Master of Arts there in 2012.

Ileana I. Diaz is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo. Broadly, her research interests lie in the intersections of sustainable food systems, feminist geopolitics, climate and environmental justice.

Truzaar Dordi is a PhD Candidate in Sustainability Management at the School of Environment, Enterprise, and Development, working under the supervision of Dr. Olaf Weber. His research utilizes advances in computational modelling to investigate the intersection between climate risk and financial resiliency.

Kathyrn R. Fair is a PhD candidate in applied mathematics at the University of Waterloo, supervised by Professor Chris T. Bauch and Professor Madhur Anand. Prior to entering graduate school, she completed a BSc (Hons) in physical science with distinction at the University of Guelph. The overarching theme of her research is modelling disturbances in coupled human-environment systems.

Milton Friesen’s work includes serving on the executive team of Cardus, a public policy think tank, in addition to pursuing a PhD at the University of Waterloo, School of Planning.

Jorge is a PhD candidate of System Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. His research activities are focused on applying agent-based models on three major areas

Diana searches for nutritional interventions addressing the complexity of malnutrition. In particular, she investigates the extent to which agroecology can improve nutrition in the long-term, through diversifying dietary intake and maintaining soil health.

Robert Gooding-Townsend is a master’s student in mathematical biology working under the supervision of Chris Bauch and Madhur Anand. Prior to his graduate work, he completed concurrent Bachelors’ of Knowledge Integration and Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo. His primary research area is forest dynamics and models of land cover change.

Julia Goyal is pursuing a Joint Interdisciplinary PhD at the University of Waterloo between the School of Public Health and Health Systems and Department of Mechatronics and Mechanical Engineering under the supervision of Dr. Ellen MacEachen and Dr. Arash Arami respectively.

Christopher Greyson-Gaito is a PhD student with Dr. Kevin McCann in the department of Integrative Biology at the University of Guelph. For his PhD, he is examining the interactions of ecological processes across scales in a variety of systems.

Yu Huang is currently completing her PhD degree in urban planning at the School of Planning, University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on the complex interactions within the urban housing market system and the emergent urban patterns and market dynamics.

Fatemeh Jahanmiri is currently completing her PhD in urban planning at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Dr. Dawn Parker. Given her background in architecture and her interest in nature-inspired design, she followed her research in the field of complexity exploring the origin of fractal patterns in cities.

Scott is a PhD candidate in Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo, where he studies the role of deep uncertainty in political decision-making. His research investigates the intersection of science and policy in the areas of climate change, infectious disease outbreaks, and artificial intelligence. Scott's dissertation research focuses on the role played by mathematical models as decision-support tools in the governance of catastrophic threats.

Peter Jentsch is a PhD candidate in the Department Of Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo. Supervised by Dr. Chris T. Bauch and Dr. Madhur Anand, his research is primarily in the field of mathematical ecology and human-environment systems. 

Ryan Johnson is a PhD candidate in the Sustainability Management program with the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development. His research explores sustainability transitions and transformations by investigating the development of sustainability reporting frameworks for agriculture, including the specific metrics they include, and their underlying paradigms and philosophies. Curiosity and eclecticism have also inspired Ryan to undertake transdisciplinary research and consulting work in a diversity of other areas, including economic and community development, climate change mitigation and adaption, and nature-based solutions planning.

Jim Jones, PhD Candidate, Social and Ecological Sustainability

The role of narratives in transitions towards sustainability through a social-ecological systems lens; the role of narrative as a tool to understand and work with complexity and 'wicked problems'. The tensions that arise at different spatial and temporal scales in the nexus of land, energy, technology, food and culture. 

Ecological economics, systems thinking and complexity, participatory governance, food systems, sustainability transitions, participatory narrative inquiry, soft systems, complexity intervention

Kurniawan graduated from the inaugural Master of Climate Change program at the University of Waterloo and he is now working towards his PhD. For his doctoral research, Kurniawan is seeking to advance the methodological approach for better anticipating hard-to-foresee scenarios for complex social systems.

John Lang is currently completing a PhD in applied mathematics at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Dr. Hans De Sterck. His work entails studying how mathematical modelling of human interaction and decision making over social networks might provide insight into the development and evolution of social movements like the Arab Spring.

Katherine Laycock is currently enrolled in PhD studies at the University of Waterloo, School of Planning.

Kirsten Lee is a PhD student in the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo, working under the supervision of Dr. Sharon Kirkpatrick. Her research focuses on assessing the effect of consumer food environment interventions (e.g. menu labelling) on food/beverage purchases and intakes, as well as evaluating post-secondary food environments.

Chris Longley is a graduate student in applied philosophy and theoretical neuroscience. He is interested in the science and ethics of neuroprediction, as well as emerging technologies more broadly.

Academic Disciplines: Philosophy, Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence

Application Areas: Psychology, Healthcare, Criminal Justice

Christopher Luederitz is a PhD candidate at the Department of Geography and Environmental Management, where he researches on business-driven sustainability-oriented innovations in food systems. He is particularly interested in the role knowledge plays in the creation and use of sustainability innovations that have the ability to support transformations of entire food systems.

Adrienne Mason is a Masters Candidate in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, supervised by Stephen Murphy.  Adrienne completed her Environmental Science degree at Trent University and worked as an ecological restorationist creating and implementing

Majid Mirza is pursuing his PhD in Sustainability Management at the University of Waterloo with a focus on financing the Sustainable Development Goals. He has over 10 years of international development and impact investing experience and is a consultant to the Canadian Government on development finance. 

Nicholas Palaschuk is a PhD Candidate in the Sustainability Management program at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. Nicholas works in the fields of corporate sustainability, environmental behaviour, and sustainability transitions. Nicholas holds both a BSc. in Biology (2015) and MSc.

Jinelle Piereder is a PhD candidate in global governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA), specializing in conflict and security, and supervised by Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon. Drawing on complexity approaches and tools such as Cognitive-Affective Mapping (CAM) and network theory, Jinelle researches the contents, causes, and effects of ideological conflict within global governance and policymaking.

Perin Ruttonsha is a doctoral candidate with the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability (SERS), at the University of Waterloo, and where she has worked in collaboration with the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (W

Ajar Sharma is a Ph.D. student in Systems Design Engineering. He has a Masters in Water Management and background in hydrology and is currently working with Vanessa Schweiser (Knowledge Integration), and Keith Hipel (Systems Design Engineering). His research interests include climate change, water, Cross Impact Balances (CIB), conflict resolution, and sustainability. 

Natalya Siddhantakar is a PhD Candidate in Sustainability Management at the School of Environment, Enterprise, and Development, working under the supervision of Dr. Vanessa Schweizer. Her research interests include just and equitable transition to sustainable low-carbon economic practices, systems thinking, sustainability accounting, and cross-impact balances (CIB) analysis.

Andjela Tatarovic enjoys learning and questioning the essence of things. Philosophy is a natural pass-time while quantifying ideas is more of a challenge, but enjoyed nonetheless. She likes learning the languages of things, and the relation between the abstract and the concrete.

Shahab Valaei Sharif is a current Ph.D. student in Urban Planning at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Dr. Dawn Parker. He holds a master’s degree in Civil Engineering with a major in Construction Engineering and Management from the Sharif University of Technology (2021). He is interested in interdisciplinary research in areas such as land and housing markets, urban infrastructure systems, and healthy cities.

In his previous research projects, he has used simulation and modelling techniques to develop policy analysis tools evaluating the effectiveness of community response and mitigation policies in the face of crises, such as natural disasters and pandemics. His current research mainly focuses on the application of system thinking techniques to solve longer-term urban problems with the final goal of increasing the resilience of cities.

Kirsten Wright moved to Waterloo to go to school for engineering. Her background is in robotics and embedded systems and more recently she has worked in social innovation. She is an author of the leading manual for Social Innovation Labs and is currently finishing a PhD in Engineering, studying methods for measuring resilience in agent based models of social innovation. 

Haotian Zhang is currently pursuing a PhD degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He received the MS degree in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 2012. His research interests are in the areas of network science and design of fault-tolerant algorithms.

Katharine Zywert is a PhD student in the School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, where she studies medicine in the Anthropocene.