New faculty member Amanda Giang starting in IRES in January 2018!

New faculty member Amanda Giang starting in IRES in January 2018!

We are so pleased to announce that Amanda Giang will join us as a new faculty member in IRES starting January 2018!

Amanda Giang

https://ires.ubc.ca/person/amanda-giang/

Assistant Professor, IRES and Department of Mechanical Engineering

Bio

Amanda Giang’s research addresses challenges at the interface of environmental modelling and policy through an interdisciplinary lens, with a focus on air pollution and toxics. She is interested in understanding how environmental assessment processes can better empower communities and inform policy decision-making. How can we assess the environmental and health impacts of human activity given uncertainty and complexity in human, technological, and natural systems? How can different ways of knowing inform policy design and evaluation? How can we integrate scientific analysis and public deliberation in policy decision-making? Combining integrated modelling and qualitative approaches, her ongoing and past research on mercury, lead, and persistent organic pollutants has explored these questions in the context of North American and global policy.  Future areas of interest include the impacts of technology and policy on pollutant fate and transport, citizen science and community based monitoring for air toxics, and policy implications of climate and air pollution interactions. Amanda holds a PhD and MS in Technology and Policy from MIT, and a BASc in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto.

Website: www.agiang.com

New IRES Adjuct Professor – Rustam Sengupta

We are please to welcome Rustam Sengupta as a new IRES Adjunct Professor!

 

BIO:

Rustam Sengupta is a renewable energy entrepreneur, impact investor and subject matter expert with extensive research experience of over a decade in sustainable social enterprise design, rooftop solar and renewable energy access. He has an expertise in identifying, designing and analysing strategies that affect energy systems and policies with a geographical focus on South Asia. He is the author of the book ‘De-Mystifying Impact Investing an Entrepreneurs’ Guide, which provides strategic, advises and recommendations on impact investment and has served as a guide for several emerging entrepreneurs and investors.

Rustam is also the founder and Chairman of Boond (www.boond.net), an energy access enterprise that creates rural entrepreneurs and distribution channels for development products like solar rooftops and solar micro grids in remote parts of India. He was selected as one of the top 36 entrepreneurs who accompanied the Indian Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi as a part of his Start up India delegation to the US in 2015. In addition to his role in impact investment advisory and deal structuring to start-ups, he has had wide experience in private banking and strategic consulting and has worked in agencies like Standard Chartered (in Singapore), Syngenta (in Switzerland) and Deloitte Consulting (in the US). He is the board member and investor of Emsys Electronics (P) Ltd (a company that designs and manufactures high quality electronic products), Mynergy Solar (P) Ltd., (a company that specializes in leasing and asset management company for solar rooftop projects) and WithIndia (P) Ltd (a company that manufacturers environmentally friendly, insect and fire proof panels and tiles. Rustam also holds the position of Associate Director at the John Hopkin’s University Institute of Sustainable Energy Policy (ISEP) where is charged with finding and implementing projects related to market-led solutions to sustainable energy policy. He is also the lead founding partner of Boond Energy Expert Group (BEEG) that works with governments, policy makers and bilateral institutions on energy storage, smart grids, distributed rooftop solar and electric transportation.

Mark Johnson and Kai Chan win 2017 UBC Faculty Research Awards

IRES faculty members Mark Johnson and Kai Chan are recipients of 2017 UBC Faculty Research Awards! 

UBC water sustainability expert Mark Johnson has been awarded the university’s Charles A. McDowell award for excellence in pure or applied scientific research by a young faculty member.

Kai Chan was selected for a UBC Killam Research Fellowship.

Winners of Faculty Research Awards were selected by UBC’s Faculty Research Award Committee, which spans arts and humanities, applied science, science, and medicine. Each spring, the Office of the Vice President Research hosts an awards reception to recognize outstanding UBC researchers. This year the reception will be held on April 17, 2018.

For the links on their awards click here:

https://science.ubc.ca/news/ecohydrologist-wins-award-young-faculty-members

https://research.ubc.ca/research-excellence/awards-honours/faculty-research-award-winners

Mark Johnson

Dr. Mark Johnson is working to understand how land use practices influence interactions between hydrological and ecological processes, and how these ecohydrological processes further affect ecosystem services including carbon sequestration. Unraveling interactions between the water cycle and the carbon cycle is essential for improving the sustainability of land and water management, especially under changing climatic conditions. Dr. Johnson’s research in ecohydrology demonstrates that soil carbon processes are also integrally important to the health of freshwater ecosystems and drinking water supplies. Dr. Johnson and his team are testing carbon and water cycle interactions to address questions such as: How much carbon does water transport from the land into freshwater systems? His research can also help to answer very applied questions related to soil fertility and water use such as: How much food can be produced in urban environments, and how much water would that require? To address these and other related questions, Johnson is developing innovative approaches to ecohydrological research in partnership with communities, natural resource management agencies and organizations, and industry.

Website: http://ecohydro.ires.ubc.ca/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=KfQwll4AAAAJ&hl=en

Kai Chan

Kai is an interdisciplinary, problem-oriented sustainability scientist, trained in ecology, policy, and ethics from Princeton University and Stanford University. He strives to understand how social-ecological systems can be transformed to be both better and wilder. Kai leads CHANS lab (www.chanslab.ires.ubc.ca), Connecting Human and Natural Systems; he is a Leopold Leadership Program fellow, a Coordinating Lead Author of the IPBES Global Assessment, a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholar, Artists and Scientists, a director on the board of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology, a member of the Global Young Academy, a senior fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program, and (in 2012) the Fulbright Canada Visiting Research Chair at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Website: http://chanslab.ires.ubc.ca/people/chan/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=OByl3J0AAAAJ
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kai_Chan3

Marie Auger-Méthé (Assistant Professor, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and Department of Statistics) becomes an IRES Faculty Associate!

We are happy to announce that Marie Auger-Méthé  (Assistant Professor, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and Department of Statistics) is a new IRES Faculty Associate!

For more information on Marie please visit the following links:

https://ires.ubc.ca/person/marie-auger-methe/

http://oceans.ubc.ca/marie-auger-methe/?login

https://www.stat.ubc.ca/users/marie-auger-methe

http://statisticalecology.weebly.com/

Scott McKenzie (RES PhD Candidate) writes a piece in The Conversation

Scott McKenzie has written an article in The Conversation, an independent source of news and views, from the academic and research community, delivered direct to the public. His article is Scientific information is the key to democracy.

Click on link below to read.

https://theconversation.com/scientific-information-is-the-key-to-democracy-88620

Photo credit: Andrea Booher/ FEMA

 

 

Bio:

Scott is a PhD student in Resource Management and Environmental Studies working under the supervision of Dr. Leila Harris. Before UBC, Scott completed a Bachelors of Arts in Environmental Studies, Philosophy, and American Studies at the University of Kansas and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Iowa. Scott’s research and writing focuses how contending notions of scale and regulation affect water policy (within the water-energy-food nexus). His work considers the relationship between the natural environment, human development, and law. He has also worked as a development agent for the United States Peace Corps in Morocco, in the Cairo office of the Near East Foundation, as a private practice lawyer in New Orleans, and at the International Water Resources Association in Montpellier France.

At UBC Scott is a member of the EDGES research collaborative and the Program on Water Governance. Scott’s research will be involved with Experience of Shifting Water Governance: Comparative Study of Water Access, Narrative and Citizenship in Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa. This collaborative comparative research project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and will focus on differing relationship between citizens in under served areas in Ghana and South Africa, their provision of water, and how they access and interact with the state to mediate this relationship.

 

December 7, 2017: IRES Special Seminar
Speaker: Bradley Eyre
Last Seminar for Term 1

IRES Seminar Series

Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)

Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall

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Role of shallow water carbonate sediment dissolution in the future accretion of coral reefs in an acidifying ocean

 

Abstract: Ocean acidification (OA) is predicted to have a significant impact on the future of coral reefs, mainly through the reduced formation of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). However, the dissolution of stored CaCO3 has largely been overlooked in the OA community. CaCO3 sediments represent the largest reservoir of carbonate minerals in coral reefs and result from the accumulation and storage of CaCO3 material over thousands of years. Benthic chamber incubations in permeable CaCO3 sediments show that aragonite saturation in the overlying water is a strong predictor of CaCO3 sediment dissolution and most reefs show a similar response to increasing average pCO2 (OA). However, every reef shows a different net sediment dissolution starting condition and the effect of end of century OA conditions on net sediment dissolution is different for every reef. Empirical relationships between average aragonite saturation and net ecosystem calcification, coral calcification and sediment dissolution from reefs around the globe are used to quantify future changes in the CaCO3 accretion of coral reefs. Quantifying the global dissolution kinetics of permeable CaCO3 sediments is clearly just as important as estimating calcification rates when predicting how OA will impact coral reef ecosystems.

Click for poster on Special Lecture

 

Bio: Professor Bradley Eyre is a biogeochemist and the foundation Director of the Centre for Coastal Biogeochemistry at Southern Cross University, Australia. His publications include topics such as whole ecosystem carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus budgets, net ecosystem metabolism estimates, benthic and pelagic production and respiration, dissolved organic carbon fluxes, carbon stable isotopes (fluxes and assimilation), carbon burial and air-sea GHG flux estimates, benthic denitrification, benthic habitats and seascapes, historical and ecosystem comparisons, ocean acidification, hypoxia, eutrophication, submarine groundwater discharge, permeable sands and carbonate sediment dissolution. Professor Eyre has 157 articles in Scopus listed journals (H-index = 44, Total citations >5000, Google Scholar; H-index = 35, Total citations>3500, Scopus) and has attracted over >$20 million in funding. He has mentored 14 early- and mid-career researchers and supervised 32 PhD students.

 

 

Photo Credit: US Fish and Wildlife Services from flickr/ Creative Commons 

Our RES Graduate Program application is open!
Deadline to apply is January 15, 2018.

The UBC online application system for RES September 2018 admissions is now open. 

The September 2018 RES admissions deadline is January 15, 2018.  References are due January 25, 2018.

Note: We do not have January admissions.

_______________________________________________________________________________

The 2018 RES application procedure, admission requirements and required documents are detailed in the below link:

https://ires.ubc.ca/graduate-program/prospective-students/how-to-apply/

For the 2018 Admissions IRES poster, click here

 

November 30, 2017: IRES Faculty Seminar
Speaker: Wade Davis

IRES Seminar Series

Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)

Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall

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The Wayfinders

ABSTRACT:

The myriad of cultures in the world, with their own traditions and beliefs, are not failed attempts at modernity, let alone failed attempts to be us. Each is an inspired expression of our collective genius, each a unique answer to a fundamental question: What does it mean to be human and alive?  Every culture has something to say, each deserves to be heard, just as none has a monopoly on the route to the divine. And yet of the world’s 7000 languages, fully half are not being taught to infants. Every fortnight an elder passes away and carries into the grave the last syllables of an ancient tongue. At risk is a vast archive of knowledge and expertise, a catalogue of the imagination that is the human legacy. Rediscovering a new appreciation for the the diversity of the human spirit, as expressed in culture, is among the central challenges of our time.

Click here for event poster.

 

This seminar is not available on video.

 

 

BIO:

Wade Davis is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker whose work has taken him from the Amazon to Tibet, Africa to Australia, Polynesia to the Arctic. Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society from 1999 to 2013, he is currently Professor of Anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. Author of 20 books, including One River, The Wayfinders and Into the Silence, winner of the 2012 Samuel Johnson prize, he holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. His many film credits include Light at the Edge of the World, an eight-hour documentary series written and produced for the National Geographic Channel. Davis is the recipient of 11 honorary degrees, as well as the 2009 Gold Medal from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, the 2011 Explorers Medal, the highest award of the Explorers’ Club, the 2012 David Fairchild Medal for botanical exploration, the 2015 Centennial Medal of Harvard University, the 2017 Roy Chapman Andrews Society’s Distinguished Explorer Award and the 2017 Sir Christopher Ondaatje Medal for Exploration. In 2016, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.

 

 

Photo Credit: Stephen Meyer from flickr/ Creative Commons

February 1, 2018: IRES Faculty Seminar
Speaker: Steve Conrad

IRES Seminar Series

Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)

Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall

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 Why people matter: including water user preferences in water policymaking

Abstract:

Water management models frequently draw on physical constructs to represent and conceptualize water system processes to inform policymaking. Yet these models often lack sufficient detail or draw assumptions about complex socio-hydrological interactions. My research highlights new approaches for the coupling of socio-economic research with hydrological models in order to simulate human-water system interactions. I will provide examples of how choice models can represent proxies of human behaviour for developing a coupled socio-hydrological model in the Okanagan region of British Columbia. I will end by highlighting how water user preferences have enhanced local planning processes and why people matter to future water policies of the Okanagan.

Bio:

Dr. Conrad is a scientist and manager with over 25 years research, industry, and consulting experience. Steve has developed this experience through roles with private consulting, municipal engineering, and as a researcher and Associate Director of the Pacific Water Research Centre, Simon Fraser University. Dr. Conrad is now an Adjunct Professor in the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia and serves on the Board of Directors for the American Water Works Association representing the BC Section. Steve’s research focus includes the water-energy nexus, municipal energy management, water supply and demand management, climate change adaptation, and the integration of social science theories with technical models to improve decision making.

 

 

Photo Credit: Jo Nicdao from flickr/ Creative Commons

Friday March 2, 2018: Future of Food Global Dialogues: ‘Grazed and Confused’

“Grazed and Confused”: Panel on meat production, climate change, and sustainability

This is a joint event between IRES, UBC Farm and UBC Animal Welfare Program (in Faculty of Land and Food Systems)

 

Friday, March 2, 2018
10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Room 107 – Aquatic Ecosystems Research Laboratory, 2202 Main Mall, Vancouver

Grazing animals have a significant influence on anthropogenic greenhouse emissions from agriculture. This seminar will invite dialogue on topics related to meat production, grazing, environment and climate change. For a background document, see the Food and Climate Research Network’s recent report on grazing systems and climate change.

Presentations (10 mins each):

  • Beyond GhGs: assessing the water footprint of cattle in Southern Amazonia – Michael Lathuillière
  • Is reduced consumption of livestock products a strong leverage point to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals? – Navin Ramankutty and Zia Mehrabi
  • Grazing cattle in family farming: welfare for the cow, the farmer and the consumer? – Luiz Carlos Pinheiro Machado

Panel Speakers:

  • Michael Lathuillière is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability and has specialized in Water Footprint assessment methods applied to agricultural products.
  • Professor Navin Ramankutty is the Canada Research Chair in Global Environmental Change and Food Security at the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability, the Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm.
  • Zia Mehrabi is a postdoctoral research fellow at Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability, the Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm.
  • Professor Luiz Carlos Pinheiro Machado is a visiting professor at UBC Animal Welfare Program. He is a professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, where he leads a research group on Animal Agroecology and Animal Welfare.

 

 

The Future of Food Global Dialogue Series talks are free, with no RSVP required.

You are invited to the UBC Future of Food Global Dialogue Series: a campus-wide initiative bringing together food security and sustainability experts from across UBC and North America to engage audiences with the Global Food System.

Upcoming Future of Food Dialogues:

The UBC Future of Food Global Dialogue Series is jointly convened by the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm, the Liu Institute for Global Issues, as part of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, UBC Reads Sustainability, an initiative of UBC Sustainability, and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability.

 

 

 

Photo Credit: Oli from flickr/ Creative Commons