Student Researchers

Carbon Neutrality, Negative Emission Technologies, CleanTech, Energy

Sustainable food systems, (Social) life cycle assessment, industrial ecology, ecosystem services, supply chain management

Claire is a first year doctoral student studying the transition from fossil fuels to electricity generated by carbon-free sources in residential heating. She is interested in the impacts of this transition on vulnerable communities and the implications that scale adoption of electric heat pumps for residential heating will have on utility rate tariffs and ultimately on consumer utility costs. Claire's work employs social science and engineering science methods to support actionable climate action policy in the building sector and utility rate design to support safe and beneficial residential heating electrification. Before entering her doctoral studies, Claire worked as a sustainable building design engineer, where her expertise in building energy systems, including heating and cooling and distributed energy resources (DERs), contributed to major new construction projects in San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Boston, and New York City

Elena’s research and academic interests focus on sustainable energy and technology deployment in developing communities, energy justice, and also international climate policy

Passionate about enabling sustainable business practices through strategic finance. Experienced automotive marketing and sales ops professional. More recent experience in GHG accounting for ag and manufacturing, corporate emissions reduction and mitigation, and tech startup growth strategy.

Food System Sustainability, Life Cycle Assessment, Packaging Impacts and Alternatives

Passionate about impact investing to achieve the triple bottom line and make better consumer products. Expert skills in quantitative and qualitative analysis for compelling storytelling. Collaborative and self-driven for results that achieve impact.

Urban resilience, sustainable food-energy-water infrastructure, socially-engaged design

Brownfield redevelopment, quantitative methods in the social sciences, environmental justice

Integration of renewable energy and storage systems into the electricity grid, sustainable energy system planning, and life cycle assessment

Julia’s areas of interest include food sustainability, food chemistry, renewable energy, economics, environmental policy, and social justice. She is applying to University of Michigan Chemical Engineering for admission in 2022.

Karl researches energy justice at the intersection of energy, health and housing policy. He is especially interested in access to energy efficiency and renewable energy for low-income and multi-family households.

Sustainable Food Systems; Life Cycle Assessment; Sustainable Supply Chains & Sourcing

Max's research interests include the expansion of renewable energy systems in developing countries, and solar energy technologies.

Nate's research involves material flow analysis for the supply chain of major automotive materials. Other research interests he'd like to pursue include sustainable energy infrastructure and sustainable business practice integration, particularly in the tourism industry.

urban climate change adaptation/resilience, climate justice, urban agriculture, spatial analytic methods and visualization

Grid Decarbonisation, Carbon Capture and Sequestration, Negative Emissions Technologies, Energy Infrastructure Systems, Environmental Justice

Stefania Almazán-Casali is an environmental social scientist. Her research focuses on understanding the interactions between human decision-making, power dynamics, and natural resource use. She follows a mixed-methods approach to provide insights on the key motivations and conditions guiding the distribution and governance of natural resources. Her approach combines surveys, behavioral experiments, and modelling tools such as agent-based models.

Stefania has international experience researching waste attitudes in Liberia, West Africa; water access in a small community  in the Peruvian Andes; and sustainable forest management in Eastern Europe. She is particularly interested in issues surrounding the collaborative management of water resources. Her upcoming research explores the effects of climate change perceptions on water allocation and investment decisions in a river-basin committee in South-East Brazil.

Nutrient recovery through urine separation, Life Cycle Assessment, Water Systems, Circular Economy

Stephen is working on assessing a new form of recycling: Pee-cycling. Instead of adding nutrient heavy urine to the wastewater treatment system and intensively treating the nitrogen and phosphorus as a waste, the project looks to create fertilizer with it instead. He is developing life cycle models to analyze the environmental trade-offs of this approach with the conventional wastewater treatment system.

Energy flow cycle; Remote sensing image visualization; Hydrological cycle; Sustainable development; GIS mapping

Sustainable Energy Systems; Energy Markets and Policies; Life Cycle Assessment; Circular Economy; Transportation/Mobility System