< Back Steven Arms David and Jan Blittersdorf Frank Bryan Mary Cushman David Marvin Raymond J. McNulty Lindsey Melander Miriam E. Nelson Germain Njila David Perez Andrew Siebengartner Bridget Thabault John Todd Mary C. Watzin Jody Williams		JOHN TODD Research Professor, School of Natural Resources “Information is global, but content is local,” says Dr. John Todd, and who should know better than the “bioneer” of ecological design and engineering? Dr. Todd is purifying polluted canals in China while developing America’s first self-sustaining agricultural/industrial park in Vermont to increase the portion of locally produced food that Burlington consumes from 2 to 10 percent. Named a “Hero of the Earth” by Time magazine in 1999 and one of the 20th Century’s top thirty-five inventors by the Lemelson-MIT Program for Invention and Innovation, Dr. Todd is in the vanguard of UVM’s drive to become the nation’s preeminent environmental university. “The intellectual ability is here to achieve it,” says Dr. Todd. Adown-to-earth visionary who has founded several environmental businesses, he particularly appreciates the “strong entrepreneurial spirit at UVM. There isn’t the us-versus-them attitude toward business that there is at many institutions.” Dr. Todd is best known for inventing living machines, ecological engines that treat wastes, produce food, generate energy, and restore damaged aquatic environments. In Brazil and China these take the form of immense floating ecosystems that extend from indigenous weeds and clams underwater to native trees reaching toward the sky. He has created other living machines to treat organic waste from pig farms in Hawaii, chicken farms in Maryland, and a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream plant in Waterbury, Vermont. “I can’t predict timing, but I can predict trends,” says Dr. Todd, who is convinced we are “inching toward sustainability. Imaginative, comprehensive, ecological design can reduce the negative human footprint on the globe by 90 percent.”