Cecilia Achiam, MA
Senior Program Manager, Policy Development, City of Richmond
Email: cecilia.achiam@richmond.ca
Cecilia completed her B. LArch and MA (Planning) at UBC. She is interested in using visually realistic computer simulations to democratize planning processes as well as to promote sustainable development practices in both urban and rural contexts. She believes in public participation and an interdisciplinary approach to land use planning. Her undergraduate degree in landscape architecture exposed her to ecological principles that continue to guide her academic and professional pursuits. She has extensive municipal planning experience in urban land use development, and remains active in consulting, with projects ranging from site design to public planning processes.
Sarah Burch, PhD
Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in Sustainability Governance, CIRS, IRES at UBC
Email: sburch@exchange.ubc.ca
Sarah Burch is a Research Associate at the University of BC, where she is focusing on institutional and behavioural barriers to climate change policy in cities, and partnerships between the public and private sectors in response to climate change. Sarah holds a PhD in Resource Management and Environmental Studies from the University of British Columbia, Canada (2009), a B.A. in International Relations (University of Calgary, 2004) and an Honours B.Sc. in Environmental Science (University of Calgary, 2004). She was awarded Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council fellowships for her doctoral and postdoctoral work. She was a Contributing Author to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in both Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) and Working Group III (Mitigation of Climate Change). Sarah teaches on institutional barriers to sustainable development paths and climate change governance, and works to build climate change literacy amongst decision-makers in the public and private sectors.
Cam Campbell, P.Ag. CSLA
Email: dccampbe@interchange.ubc.ca
Cam is a Professional Agrologist and Landscape Architect who received his MSc. Forestry from Oxford University and BLA from UBC. Prior to joining CALP, Cam practiced as a consultant landscape architect and planner with various firms in Vancouver, served as the Forest Design Specialist with the BC Ministry of Forests and spent several years working in the forest industry at various locations along BC’s coast. His research and practice focus on integrated forest design methods, the role of interactive 3D visualizations in community planning processes and managing landscape change at the urban / wildland edge to address issues of place and community character.
Brent Chamberlain, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar
Email: chambs10@interchange.ubc.ca
Brent’s research focuses on building a more environmentally sustainable global community by expanding individuals’ spatial understanding of the environment around them using GIS, Remote Sensing and related technologies. Brent’s background includes two bachelors degrees from Pacific Lutheran University (Business Administration and Computer Science), a private pilot’s license and work experience in network security, web design and systems analysis. Brent is interested in public perceptions of environment including indigenous and international peoples. For more info: http://brentchamberlain.org/
Stewart Cohen, PhD
Senior Researcher, Regional Assessments of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation, Environment Canada
E-mail: stewart.cohen@ec.gc.ca
Dr. Stewart Cohen is senior researcher with the Adaptation and Impacts Research Division of Environment Canada. Dr. Cohen’s research interests are in climate change impacts and adaptation at the regional scale, and exploring how climate change can affect sustainable development. Recent work includes a case study on climate change and water management in the Okanagan region of British Columbia, and the study on climate change visualization led by Professor Stephen Sheppard of UBC. He is currently a member of the advisory committee for the Columbia Basin Trust climate change adaptation program. Previously, he led the Mackenzie Basin Impact Study (MBIS), a 7-year effort focused on climate change impacts in the western Canadian Arctic, completed in 1997. His earlier work included research on impacts in the Great Lakes and Saskatchewan River Basins He has been a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third and Fourth Assessment Reports. Dr. Cohen is a geographer having received his B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. from McGill University, University of Alberta, and University of Illinois, respectively.
Ken Fairhurst, PhD
RDI
Email: rdi@rdi3d.com
Ken has added new learning and research through his Ph.D. program to his extensive career dedicated to the field of Visual Resource Management (VRM). His main interests are computer visualization, total resource planning (integrated visual design), visual impact analysis, and the economic benefits of forest aesthetics. This is the 3rd degree pursued by Ken at UBC, having earlier received his B.S.F. and M.Sc.(F). He is a Registered Professional Forester and principal of his resource planning and visualization consulting firm, RDI Resource Design Inc, established in 1996 (www.rdi3d.com). Ken’s dissertation was on cumulative visual landscape risk prediction and planning through an approach and tool that he developed called GEOptics Landscape Apparency. The dissertation was accepted in August, 2010 and is available on-line at the UBC library: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/28006.
Julian Gonzalez, PhD
Forest Resources Management, UBC
Email: jgt@interchange.ubc.ca
Julian has a background in industrial engineering, decision sciences, local economic development, sustainability planning and community engagement. He is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in the Faculty of Forestry, researching leadership and educational approaches that can support individuals and societies to better learn, change and adapt to the sustainability challenges that we collectively face. Julian completed a master’s degree at UBC exploring the dynamics of human development and societal learning in the context of local sustainability strategies. For more than 7 years, Julian has been involved in teaching initiatives at UBC, instructing in 10+ courses as a teaching assistant, and co-instructing an experiential sustainability leadership course with Mike Meitner.
Murray Journeay, PhD
Research Scientist, Natural Resources Canada
Email: mjourneay@gsc.nrcan.gc.ca
Robert Kozak, PhD
Professor and Dean, Faculty of Forestry, UBC
Email: rkozak@interchg.ubc.ca
Rob has spent most of his career working in various capacities in the forest sector – in industry, government and academia. His research interests revolve around improving business practices, supply chain management issues, applied probability and statistics and survey research methods. Currently, he is researching various market issues, with a focus on consumer perceptions, forest certification and healthful living.
John Lewis, PhD
Assistant Professor, School of Planning, Faculty of Environmental Studies, University of Waterloo
Email: j7lewis@uwaterloo.ca
In addition to his academic training, John brings experience as a professional planner and planning consultant from Ontario and British Columbia. In British Columbia, he has worked extensively with community groups and with First Nations to address landscape and resource management issues, and has pioneered the use of computer-based landscape simulations in First Nations community consultation exercises. His work has been published in national and international planning journals, and he has co-authored a book on the effective and ethical use of landscape visualization technology in community consultation. His area of expertise is in environmental (urban and rural) planning and design, and his research interests include environmental values and preferences; cross-cultural environmental perception; computer-based landscape visualization; aboriginal issues in land-use planning and management; community participation and consultation.
Ana Macias-Palomo, PhD Student
Laboratorio de Selvicultura Departamento de Silvopascicultura,
Escuela Tecnica Superior de Ingenieros de Montes, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid Ciudad
Email: ana.macias@upm.es
Michael Meitner, PhD, Assistant Professor
Forest Resources Management, IDEAL, UBC
E-mail: mike.meitner@gmail.com
Dr. Meitner received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in Environmental Psychology in 1999 with areas of emphasis in human emotional processing, visual perception, scenic beauty and aesthetics, decision-making theory and systems, and representational validity. Besides his psychology background, Mike has extensive experience in experimental methodology, statistical analysis and exploration, data/environmental visualization, image processing and Geographic Information Systems. He has been involved in a number of modeling efforts focused on the distributed artificial intelligence modeling of human/landscape interactions with specific attention to issues of conflict in outdoor recreation and tourism. Mike is also quite interested in issues surrounding human computer interaction, graphic user interface (GUI) design, application development, and Internet assessment/experimentation techniques.
Sara Muir-Owen, MCIP, MLarch, BSc
Program Coordinator, Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS), UBC Campus
Email: sara.muir-owen@ubc.ca
Sabine Pahl, PhD
Lecturer in Psychology, University of Plymouth, United Kingdom
Email: sabine.pahl@plymouth.ac.uk
Dr. Pahl is an environmental psychologist at the University of Plymouth, England, conducting innovative research in behaviour change and risk perception/attitudes relating to climate change and sustainability. She has conducted and published some of the leading work on use of thermal imaging to foster action on energy efficiency and reducing carbon footprints. She is currently supervising one PhD student that has used thermographic images of homes to motivate energy-saving behaviour among householders (by visually depicting where heat is lost and energy wasted), and another PhD researcher evaluating the role of visual images in sustainability. As well, she is testing the effects of hopeful versus pessimistic climate scenarios on people’s attitudes, and is a co-researcher for the 2-year project “Seeing is Believing” at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry.
The main purpose of her visit to CALP is to build up a long-term international collaboration on the use of visualisation tools to communicate climate change risks and motivate adaptation and mitigation behaviours. This collaboration will help develop and share ways to assess the acceptability of mitigation and adaptation options, by presenting them to stakeholders and residents and assessing their reactions. Such an approach would permit improved evaluations and strengthening of educational and capacity-building strategies, by applying rigorous psychological research methods to field research and identifying best practices for climate change communication at the local level.
Angelique Pilon, MA
USI, UBC
Email: angelique.pilon@ubc.ca
Angelique joined CALP as the Coordinator for the BC Hydro Theatre project which is housed in the CIRS building. Working closely with the Project Manager, Jon Salter, Angelique assisted in theatre design, equipment purchasing, and documentation of the lab functioning. For more information on this project please visit: http://www.sustain.ubc.ca/hubs/cirs/building/facilities
Russ Parsons, PhD
Northwest Environmental Psychology
Email: rjp6@comcast.net
Paul Picard, F.Eng, MSc
Natural Resources Specialist (Tenures Officer), Rocky Mountain Resource District
Email: paul.picard@gov.bc.ca
Paul is a professional forester from Quebec. He joined the CALP Team in November 1999 as a research assistant and graduate student. Paul’s background includes a B.Sc. in forestry from Laval University (Quebec) during which he took part in a student exchange program with the University of British Columbia for 1 1/2 years. Paul’s research interests lie in the public perception of harvesting practices, and in finding ways to satisfy both the public’s desire to protect non-timber values, and the need for forest workers to earn a living. He is also interested in visualization as a communication tool to portray different management alternatives to the public.
Ellen Pond, MLA
Senior Technical & Policy Advisor, Sustainable Communities Group, Pembina Institute
Email: ellenp@pembina.org Tel: 604-874-8558 (ext 229)
Ellen worked with the Collaborative for Landscape Planning, UBC, on climate change mitigation visualization and planning from 2009 – May 2012. She received her MLA from UBC, producing an ASLA award-winning graduate project on retrofitting existing residential neighbourhoods for intensive climate change mitigation. She is the 2008 UBC Olmsted Scholar, and a North American Olmsted Scholar finalist. Research interests include site adaptive and systems-based mitigation, advancing the integration of climate change into the landscape architecture profession and curriculum, and urban agriculture.
Alison Shaw, PhD
Research Associate, School of Environment and Sustainability, Royal Roads University
Email: A.Shaw@ubc.ca
Alison’s research emphasizes global to local linkages in sustainability and climate change; building community resilience while minimizing community impacts on global climate change. She researches, teaches, consults and publishes in areas of science-policy innovation, global to local scenario development, and integrated and participatory methods for sustainability planning. As Research Associate with the MC3 project, she is interested in analyzing innovative drivers and methods contributing to social mobilization on climate change and sustainability in B.C. Alison was Project Manager and Research Associate for CALP’s Local Climate Change Project 2007-2009.
Ron van Lammeren, PhD
Associate Professor, Geo-Information Science, Wageningen University, The Netherlands
Email: ron.vanlammeren@wur.nl
In 2010, Ron was a visiting scholar at CALP for several months. Besides the many lessons from CALP projects, the results and definition of his climate adaptation visualization PhD project can be viewed at http://www.iospress.nl/book/exploring-the-visual-landscape/.
Dr. Ron van Lammeren teaches courses in geo-information science (eg introduction geo-information science and graphics, GIS for society, GIS and remote sensing integration) at Wageningen University. His research focuses on geo-visualisation topics in relation to knowledge exchange and communication, spatio-temporal modeling and, spatial thinking and learning. Case studies in landscape planning and design in relation to climatic change impact and sustainable energy offer test beds and experimental settings for this research topics. More information about his education and research activities may be found at http://www.grs.wur.nl/UK/Staff/Ron+van+Lammeren/.
Veronique Yelle, Visiting PhD Student (2010 to Spring 2011)
University of Laval, Quebec
Email: veronique.yelle.1@ulaval.ca