Gund Faculty Fellows

Faculty Fellows

Taylor Ricketts

Director of the Gund Institute for Environment • Professor, Rubenstein School of the Environment and Natural Resources

Expertise

Economic and health benefits that nature provides to people, crop pollination by wild bees, climate and environmental impacts on children's health, conservation of global biodiversity, ecological dynamics across agricultural...

Carol Adair

Associate Professor, Rubenstein School • Faculty Fellow, Gund Institute for Environment • Director, Aiken Forestry Sciences Laboratory

Expertise
  • global climate change
  • ecosystem ecology
  • biogeochemistry

Mads Almassalkhi

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering • Faculty Fellow, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise
  • Power and Energy Systems
  • Control Systems
  • Mathematical Optimization
  • Renewable Energy Integration

Appala Raju Badireddy

Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Expertise

Water Quality Engineering, Membrane Separation Processes, Resource Recovery from Solid- and Liquid-Waste, Environmental Photochemistry

M. Noelia Barrios-Garcia

Lecturer

Expertise
  • invasive species
  • climate change
  • community ecology
  • ecosystem ecology

Robert Bartlett

Emeritus Professor, Rubenstein Sch Env & Nat Res, Political Science

Expertise

Research: American environmental politics, comparative environmental policy, international environmental governance, and global green politics

Brian Beckage

Professor, Department of Computer Science • Gund Institute for Environment Faculty Fellow • Graduate Student Advisor

Expertise
  • Forest ecology
  • Theoretical ecology
  • Statistics

Emily Belarmino, PhD

Assistant Professor

Expertise
  • Public Health Nutrition
  • Food System-Nutrition linkages

Paul Bierman

Professor, Rubenstein School • Faculty Fellow, Gund Institute for Environment • Director of UVM/NSF Community Cosmogenic Laboratory

Expertise

Geology, Greenland and glaciers, geohydrology, geochemistry, geologic dating, climate change, erosion and human-landscape interaction, landscape history, and science education and communication.

Pablo Bose

Professor

Expertise

Refugee resettlement in non-traditional destinations, food and migration, environmental displacement, kolkata and Globalization, technology, education and representation. 

Patrick J. Callery, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Expertise

Yolanda Fanslow Chen

Professor • Faculty Fellow, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise
  • Insect Ecology
  • Population Genetics
  • Agroecology
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Insect-plant Interactions,
  • Evolution
  • Epigenetics
  • Ecological Pest Management

Chris Danforth

Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics • Director, Vermont Advanced Computing Center • Co-Director, Computational Story Lab • Associate Director, Vermont Complex Systems Institute • Faculty Fellow, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise
  • Computational social science
  • complex systems
  • chaos
  • global happiness
  • health benefits of nature

Cecilia Danks

Associate Professor • Affiliate, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise
  • environmental studies
  • forestry
  • environmental policy
  • sustainable forestry
  • community forestry
  • climate change mitigation
  • forest carbon markets
  • woody biomass energy

Heather Darby

Extension Professor

Expertise

Soil quality and nutrient management, Grain production, Organic farming, Forages, Hops, Oilseed crops.

Lesley-Ann L. Dupigny-Giroux

Distinguished Professor

Expertise

Climate variability and change; climatology; natural hazards; drought; floods; severe weather; frontline communities; State of Vermont; State Climatologist; New England; Northeast; regional climate; adaptation; resilience.

Jon Erickson

Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education • Professor • Faculty Fellow, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise
  • Ecological economics
  • Sustainable development
  • Systems modeling

Joshua Farley

Professor • L4E Ecological Economics Lead • Affiliate, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise

Designing an economy to balance what is biophysically possible with what is socially, psychologically, and ethically desirable. 

Joshua Faulkner

Research Associate Professor • Director, Agricultural and Environmental Testing Lab • Director, UVM Extension Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Expertise

Climate change impacts and adaptation in Northeastern agricultural systems; Treatment of agricultural wastewater and best management practices for control of nonpoint source pollution; Field scale hydrology and water management in agricultural...

Brendan Fisher

Professor • Director, Environmental Program • Affiliate, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise

Gillian Galford

Research Associate Professor • Faculty Fellow, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise

Climate change and measurement, environmental sustainability, ecosystems ecology, nitrogen and carbon cycling, greenhouse gases, remote sensing, ecosystems modeling, land-cover and land-use change, tropical agriculture, Vermont's...

Ehsan Ghazanfari

Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering • Affiliate, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise
  • Geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering
  • Geo-energy systems
  • Sensors/sensing for civil infrastructure

Kelsey Gleason, Sc.D., M.S.

Assistant Professor

Expertise

Global health, humanitarian crises, climate change, forced and climate-related displacement, refugee studies.

Nicholas J. Gotelli

University Distinguished Professor of Biology • George H. Perkins Professor of Zoology

Expertise

Organization of animal and plant communities

Rachelle Gould

Associate Professor, Rubenstein School • Faculty Fellow, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise

Instructional program: Environmental Studies
Research: Environmental values, well-being, Cultural Ecosystem Services, environmental learning, human behavior, policy, diversity, equity

William Keeton

Professor • Faculty Fellow, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise

Instructional programs: Environmental Sciences, Forestry
Research: Forest ecology and dynamics; climate, forest carbon & energy; sustainable forestry

Matthew Kolan

Adjunct Senior Lecturer • Faculty Fellow, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise
  • Ecological leadership and learning
  • Power, privilege, and equity
  • Social transformation and systems change
  • Field ecology and animal tracking

Jane Kolodinsky

Professor Emeritus

Expertise
  • consumer behavior
  • economics of information
  • genetic engineering
  • hemp
  • applied econometrics
  • consumer policy

Byung S. Lee

Professor, Department of Computer Science

Expertise
  • database
  • data mining
  • data science
  • machine learning
  • information retrieval

Teresa Mares

Associate Professor, Anthropology

Expertise

Food security, migration, labor studies, border studies, food justice

Jeffrey Marshall

Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering • Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education

Expertise

Fluid Dynamics, Particulate Flows, Renewable Energy Systems, Biofluids

V. Ernesto Méndez

Professor of Agroecology and Environmental Studies

Expertise
  • Agroecology
  • Food Security and Sovereignty
  • Rural Livelihoods
  • Agrifood Systems
  • Political Ecology
  • Participatory Action Research (PAR)
  • Environmental Conservation in Agricultural Landscapes

Scott C. Merrill

Research Associate Professor • Managing Director, Social-Ecological Gaming & Simulation (SEGS) Lab UVM

Expertise

Systems ecology, Integrated Pest Management (IPM), social-ecological systems, Landscape ecology, serious games, experimental gaming, animal biosecurity, climate change, population modeling, Monte Carlo simulations, and spatiotemporal modeling.

Brittany Mosher

Associate Professor • Affiliate, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise
  • Disease and population ecology
  • Quantitative ecology
  • Conservation decision-making
  • Herpetology
  • Conservation biology

James "Jed" Murdoch

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs • Professor • Faculty Fellow, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise

Instructional program: Wildlife and Fisheries Biology
Research: Wildlife ecology, conservation biology

Deborah Neher

Professor Emerita

Expertise
  • Soil Ecology
  • Biological Indicators of Soil
  • Plant-Soil Interactions
  • Epidemiology of Root Pathogens

Meredith Niles, PhD

Professor

Expertise
  • Food Systems Sustainability
  • Food Security
  • Farmer Behavior
  • Social-Ecological Systems

Bindu Panikkar

Associate Professor • Faculty Fellow, Gund Institute for Environment • Associate Director, Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security (IEDS)

Expertise

Environmental health, community based research, environmental policy, natural resources, Arctic environment and health, environmental health social movements, environmental justice

Julia Perdrial

Professor of Geochemistry

Expertise

Collaborative research on land -interactions that integrates laboratory, field and data-based investigations to investigate the Earth surface (i.e. Critical Zone) resilience, including carbon and nutrient dynamics, catchment hydrology and...

George Pinder

Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering • Affiliate, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise
  • Water Resources
  • Environmental
  • Sustainability & Energy
  • Geotechnical & Geoenvironmental
  • Climate Change & Hazard Mitigation

Travis Reynolds

Associate Professor • MPA Program Director

Expertise
  • food policy
  • food security
  • agricultural development
  • sustainable agriculture
  • rural livelihoods

Mariano A. Rodriguez-Cabal

Assistant Professor • Affiliate, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise
  • Community ecology
  • Global change ecology
  • Invasive species
  • Plant-animal interactions

Joe Roman

Research Affiliate • Affiliate, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise

Instructional programs: Environmental Sciences, Wildlife and Fisheries Biology
Research: Biodiversity, biological invasions, conservation biology, ecosystem services, marine ecology, marine mammals

Matthew Scarborough

Assistant Professor • Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering • College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences

Expertise

Biological Wastewater Treatment, Anaerobic Bioprocessing of Wastes, Microbiome Engineering, Modeling of Microbiomes

Stephanie Seguino

Emerita Faculty • Professor of Economics

Expertise

Macroeconomics and development.

Racial and gender inequality.

Trisha Shrum

Associate Professor

Expertise
  • Climate Change
  • Behavioral Science
  • Environmental Economics
  • Behavioral Economics
  • Experimental Economics
  • Environmental Policy
  • Risk & Uncertainty

Daniel Tobin

Director of the Sustainable Development Policy, Economics, and Governance Ph.D. program • Associate Professor • Graduate Faculty, Food Systems • Faculty Fellow, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise

Sociology of agriculture, Development Sociology, Political economy of agricultural development, Crop diversity conservation, and Seed Systems.

Christine Vatovec

Clinical Assistant Professor, College of Nursing and Health Sciences • Planetary Health Lead, Osher Center for Integrative Health • Research Assistant Professor, Larner College of Medicine • Lecturer and Research Affiliate, Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources • Gund Institute for Environment Fellow

Expertise

Planetary health, climate change and human health, decarbonizing healthcare, environmental public health, health benefits of nature contact, integrative healthcare, Whole Person Health, pharmaceutical pollution, social science surveys,...

Luis Vivanco

Chair of the Anthropology Department • Professor

Expertise

Cultural and environmental anthropology, development and social movements, knowledge, science and technology, cultures of mobility, tourism, ethnographic methods; Latin America.

Eric Bishop von Wettberg

Chair of the Department of Animal and Veterinary Science • Director of VT Agricultural Experiment Station • Professor

Expertise

Crop genetics, evolution, genomics, breeding, domestication and sustainability. Legumes and germplasm. Animal grazing and sustainability. Agriculture, food, ecology, conservation. 

Leon Walls

Associate Professor of Education

Expertise
  • Curriculum and Instruction
  • Multiculturalism
  • Race and Racism
  • Science Education
  • Science of Sustainability
  • Teacher Education

Rory Waterman

Professor — Inorganic, Organometallic, and Catalysis

Expertise

Chemistry, synthetic and mechanistic inorganic/organometallic chemistry, energy, catalysis, professional development

Beverley C. Wemple

University Scholar • Professor of Geography and Environmental Sciences • Faculty Director, Water Resources Institute

Expertise

Water resources, geomorphology, GIS, spatial modeling, human-environment interactions, mountain environments.

Eva "Lini" Wollenberg

Research Professor • Affiliate, Gund Institute for Environment

Expertise

Instructional program: Natural Resources
Research: Climate change & land use, natural resource management & governance, agriculture-forest landscapes, anthropology, international rural livelihoods

Asim Zia

Associate Dean of Research and Postgraduate Education • Professor of Public Policy (CDAE) • Senior Faculty Advisor, Water Resources Institute • Gund Fellow • Co-Director of the Social-Ecological Gaming and Simulation (SEGS) Lab

Expertise

Computational policy analysis, governance networks, social ecological systems, coupled natural and human systems, sustainable development, food, energy and water systems