Profiles

Bruce is a Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Environment. He is an Urban Planner and Geographer, and teaches in the International Development program. His research interests fall within the broad ambit of sustainable cities, and encompass the three related areas of human migration, urbanization and food security.

My research program is primarily focused on issues related to freight transportation and logistics although I have a broad interest in transportation at all levels and geographies. I’m really intrigued by the flows of people and goods that underpin social and economic interactions and the complex impacts of those flows.

To advance science in these areas of interests, Derek is currently using remotely piloted aircraft to remotely sense agriculture and urban areas using thermal, multi-spectral, and LiDAR sensors. Collected data are used for a variety of purposes that include: quantifying natural processes (e.g., erosion, carbon storage) at the scale of individual property parcels or agricultural fields; calibrate and validate models of natural processes; and among other interests, generate 3D immersive environments for visualization and knowledge transfer.

Jean Andrey is a professor and Dean of the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo with an expertise in climate change adaptation, planning, sustainable transportation, hazard and risk assessment, and weather-transport interactions. She is experienced working with federal, provincial, and municipal governments as well as industry, community, professional and not-for-profit organizations on adaptation priorities. Jean's research is concerned with the implications of climate change for transportation infrastructure and operations and is highly regarded as a teacher and mentor to undergraduate and graduate students alike. 

Dr. Jennifer Lynes is an associate professor. She is Chair of the non-profit organization Residential Energy Efficiency Program (REEP Green Solutions) and co-founder of the North American Sustainable Concerts Working Group. With an educational background in both marketing and environmental studies, her expertise intersects business and the environment, where she focuses on investigating the marketing of sustainability. Her key research interests include social and community-based green marketing, residential energy conservation behaviour and engaging youth in environmental issues. 

Juan Moreno-Cruz is an Associate Professor at the School of Environment, Enterprise, and Development at the University of Waterloo.  He is also a CESifo Research Affiliate. Prior to his current position, Moreno-Cruz was an Associate Professor in the School of Economics at the Georgia Institute of Technology (2011-2017). Professor Moreno-Cruz's research focuses on the interaction of energy systems, technological change, and climate policy. His most influential work examines how solar and carbon geoengineering technologies affect climate policy. His most recent work provides novel insights into the process of energy transitions by demonstrating how energy access shapes the organization of the economy in cities and how energy consumption in cities in turn pollutes the local and global environment. 
 

Olaf Weber is a Professor at the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development. In addition, he holds the position as the University of Waterloos Research Chair in Sustainable Finance and is Senior Fellow of CIGI. His research and teaching interests address the connection between financial sector players, such as banks and sustainable development and the link between sustainability and financial performance of enterprises.

Paul is a sustainability researcher with a passion for low carbon aviation and a love of teaching. He brings social science expertise to a diverse set of energy and development research projects, often with engineer colleagues. He has 175 publications and over 230 presentations on a broad range of projects: zero-carbon buildings, energy retrofits, smart grid technologies, renewables in remote communities, sustainable economic development and community energy planning. Electric and low carbon aviation is the next challenge.                                      

Dr. Quinn Lewis is a physical geographer and geomorphologist who studies the landscape – how flow processes like rivers and wind, together with human-induced processes, move energy and landscape material and ultimately form and alter earth’s surface. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois Department of Geography and GIS in 2018 and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Indiana University, supported by the Environmental Resilience Institute. His research combines intensive field work with remote sensing and Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS) to improve our understanding of dynamic and interrelated physical processes and landforms. 

Richard Kelly’s interests are in characterizing terrestrial cryospheric processes for advancing our understanding of climate change and water resource management. His research group focuses on the development and application of novel approaches to estimate and map snow accumulation and water storage on the Earth using satellite, airborne and ground-based microwave and visible-infrared remote sensing systems. 

Professor Steven Young is a resource sustainability expert supporting the transition to a low-carbon, responsible and “circular” economy. After his PhD from Toronto, he worked in industry for 15-years in life cycle assessment and environmental strategy. As an academic he engages internationally in industry and civil activities on responsible sourcing, sustainability standards and supply-chains. Dr Young is widely published in management, resource policy and sustainability journals. 

Dr. Su-Yin Tan is a Continuing Lecturer in the Geomatics Program, Teaching Fellow of the Faculty of Environment, and Director of the Applied Geomatics Research Laboratory at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She previously served as the Associate Director of the UW Aviation program and supported program review/accreditation and curriculum design. She is also a faculty member of the International Space University (ISU) based in Strasbourg, France, where she has served in the roles of Core Chair and Space Applications Department Chair for the Space Studies Program (SSP) and lectures at the Masters of Space Studies (MSS) program and Executive Space Courses at The Museum of Flight in Seattle. 

Dr. Suzanne Kearns is an aviation academic with a focus on education and optimizing pilot performance, receiving her PhD from Capella University in 2007. Her research explores how to optimize the next generation of aviation professionals (NGAP) by analyzing processes to attract people to the field of aviation, optimizing and innovating the traditional education pathway, and improving the retention of professionals within the field. She is a former airplane and helicopter pilot and is internationally recognized within the aviation industry.

Vanessa's fundamental training was in Physics, and she holds minors in Mathematics, Philosophy, and Speech Communication. She also holds a master’s in Environmental Studies and a PhD in Engineering and Public Policy. She blends these interdisciplinary interests through her work on scenarios, which are common tools for collective decision-making. In a variety of contexts, collective decision-making includes many processes such as articulating aspirations and values, exercising foresight, confronting uncertainties and risks, and negotiating trade-offs. Vanessa's teaching includes coursework on design and problem-solving. Her research focuses on the problem of cross-disciplinary knowledge integration and the design of scenarios for the human dimensions of large-scale environmental change. She also has ongoing projects around problems in long-term decision-making such as forecasting and discontinuities (that is, developments that could be considered "game-changing" compared to the status quo). Her recent work has included the influence of occupational, interpersonal, and cultural conflicts on climate change attitudes.