Current Fellows
Short Biographies
2008 Fellows
Leontine Alkema
Leontine Alkema received her Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Washington, with a specialization in Statistical Demography. Her dissertation research focused on estimating and projecting HIV prevalence and fertility rates in developing countries, in collaboration with UNAIDS and the United Nations Population Division. At the University of Washington, Alkema was a Shanahan fellow at the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology. During her graduate studies, she also did research on identifying poverty groups in the slums of Nairobi at the African Population and Health Research Institute in Kenya, and was a visiting researcher at the Centre for Actuarial Research at the University of Cape Town. As an Earth Institute Fellow, Leontine focuses on the development of statistical methodology for demographic research in developing countries. She was born in the Netherlands and also holds a M.A. and B.A. in Applied Mathematics from Delft University in the Netherlands. She is working with Andrew Gelman, Professor of Statistics.
Website: http://www.columbia.edu/~la2354/
Stergios Athanassoglou
Stergios Athanassoglou is a new Earth Institute Fellow who received his Ph.D in Operations Research from Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 2008. He is native of Greece and focused his doctoral dissertation on game theoretic models of allocation. As a doctoral student, he developed and analyzed resource and cost allocation mechanisms, which, within certain frameworks for an economy, produce outcomes that meet precise criteria of efficiency and fairness. His current research interests are in the area of environmental and resource economics applied to groundwater management. He is particularly interested in studying the design of contract farming mechanisms in India and in developing a general game-theoretic framework for groundwater extraction in the presence of land heterogeneity and income inequality. Regarding the latter, he plans to study the effects different subsidy mechanisms induce on equilibrium extraction patters. Methodological tools include optimization, optimal control, and game theory. Athanassoglou also received a BA in Mathematics from Yale College. At the Earth Institute, he will be working with Manu Lall, Director of the Columbia Water Center, and Vijay Modi, Professor of Mechanical Engineering.
Website: http://www.columbia.edu/~sa2164/
Sandra Baptista
Sandra Baptista received her Ph.D. and M.S. in Geography from Rutgers University. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from Brown University. Baptista's research addresses sustainable development, globalization, social inequalities, human rights, and environmental justice by examining transformations in metropolitan regions. She is particularly interested in participatory approaches to environmental governance in Brazilian metropolitan settings. Her dissertation titled "Forest Recovery and Just Sustainability in the Florianópolis City-Region" analyzes the environmental history and the contemporary landscape of a coastal metropolitan region in southern Brazil. As an Earth Institute Fellow, she is continuing to examine the social and ecological dynamics of metropolitan regions. Her work includes research on land-use transitions, ecosystem services, vulnerabilities to climate change impacts, and opportunities for adaptation to climate-related risks. With a focus on the Latin American region, Baptista is contributing to the development of global-scale spatial data sets, products, and services that integrate socioeconomic, ecological, and remote sensing data, such as the Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project (GRUMP) data collection housed at the NASA-funded Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). She is working with Marc Levy and others at the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN).
Liza Comita
Liza Comita received her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in Plant Biology. Her dissertation focused on patterns of tree and seedling distributions and dynamics in Panama in order to evaluate hypotheses concerning the maintenance of diversity in tropical forests. As an Earth Institute Fellow, she is interested in interpreting and applying research findings, both her own research and those of her colleagues, to conservation, restoration, and sustainable development efforts, with a particular focus on forest conservation in Latin America and forest regeneration after hurricanes in Puerto Rico. She has authored multiple academic papers, including publications in Nature, Ecology and Journal of Ecology. Comita also has a Masters degree in Conservation Biology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her Earth Institute core focus will be Ecosystems and she is working with Maria Uriarte in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology (E3B).
Elisabeth King
Elisabeth King joined the Earth Institute after receiving her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto. Her dissertation research examined the role of formal education in both violent conflict and peacebuilding in Rwanda. At Columbia, working with Macartan Humphreys in the Department of Political Science, King will expand her research to more broadly examine the nexus of development, conflict and peacebuilding in a number of African countries. King has received several scholarships and awards for her work, including the Social Science & Humanities Research Council Grant and the Canadian Consortium on Human Security Fellowship.
Chie Sakakibara
Chie Sakakibara recently received her Ph.D. and Master’s in Cultural Geography and Art History, respectively, from the University of Oklahoma and her Bachelor’s Degree from Aichi Prefectural University in Nagoya, Japan. Her Ph.D. research examined how the Inupiat of Arctic Alaska culturally process environmental changes incurred by climate change. Funded by a NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, she conducted fieldwork in Barrow and Point Hope, Alaska. While in Alaska, she studied bowhead whaling and how associated social rituals establish the core of Inupiat’s cultural identity as the “People of the Whales.” Presently, climate change threatens subsistence whaling practices and, thus, makes global climate change policy a human rights concern for the Inupiat. Prior to her acceptance as an Earth Institute Fellow, she was invited by the Columbia University Center for Ethnomusicology as a part of their Native Studies Speakers Series to give a talk in the Fall of 2007 on her research. She will be working with Aaron Fox, Director for the Center for Ethnomusicology, and Stephanie Pfirman, Department Chair, Environmental Science, Barnard College.
Sean Smukler
Sean Smukler studied ecology at the University of California, Davis, where he obtained his Ph.D. this year. His dissertation was titled “Managing Organic Farmscapes for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functions.” Smukler has worked in agriculture, ecological restoration, forestry and waste and sanitation sustainability. He has experience working in developing nations with farmers and an international development organization in the mountains of Nepal, creating strategies to conserve forest ecosystems by increasing on farm fodder production through agroforestry and is a certified permaculture designer. Smukler has also received multiple awards including the Achievement Rewards for College Students Foundation Scholarship. He also holds a M.S. in Forest soils from the University of Washington and a B.S. in Environmental Biology and Management from UC Davis. He is working with Cheryl Palm of the Tropical Agriculture Program and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI). He is also interested in conducting research in the Millennium Villages.
Leigh Winowiecki
Leigh Winowiecki studies the link between soil formation and biogeochemical cycling of plant nutrients in agroforestry systems in tropical landscapes. She received her Ph.D. in Soil Science jointly from the University of Idaho and CATIE (Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza) in Turrialba, Costa Rica. Leigh's doctoral research also examined the role of local ecological (soil) knowledge of indigenous farmers in the development of innovative soil management techniques and technology transfer. At the Earth Institute, Leigh will contribute to the African Soil Information Service (AfSIS) project, which will digitally map and predict imperative soil properties of 18.1 sq. km of sub-Saharan Africa. She is working with Pedro Sanchez and Cheryl Palm in the Tropical Agriculture Program at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
2007 Fellows
Erin Lothes Biviano
Erin Lothes Biviano received her doctorate in contemporary systematic theology from Fordham University, where her research focused on the interpretation of religious symbols, and specifically, the paradoxical function of sacrifice as a model for Christian identity. Her dissertation will be published this fall by Crossroad as "The Paradox of Christian Sacrifice." She also holds a master's degree in theology from Boston College and a bachelor's degree in English literature from Princeton University. She has served as associate director of Service-Learning and assistant provost for academic affairs at St. John's University in New York, and is a charter member of the New Jersey Catholic Coalition for Environmental Justice. As a fellow of the Earth Institute of Columbia University, Erin will be associated with the Center for the Study of Science and Religion. Her research will focus on how religious congregations are taking leadership in environmental awareness and conversion for a book on religious responses to the environmental crisis. Ongoing research interests include reflection on human finitude, sacrifice as a form of ethical decision-making, ecology and environmental ethics, and inter-religious dialogue on the environment.
Daven Henze
Daven Henze grew up in Tonasket, Washington, a small town east of the Cascades along the Canadian border. He attended college at the University of Washington in Seattle, studying chemistry and chemical engineering. Daven recently received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering at Caltech, where his research focused on model analysis of atmospheric aerosols. Both forward and inverse modeling techniques were used to estimate the impact of human activity on observed aerosol distributions, with implications for both climate change and air quality. As an Earth Institute Fellow at Columbia University he will be further investigating issues related to aerosol sources and future mitigation strategies under the guidance of Drew Shindell and James Hansen at NASA GISS.
Website: http://puck.che.caltech.edu/~daven/home/main.html
Cassidy Johnson
Cassidy Johnson has a background in urban development and minimum cost housing, with a focus on urbanization in developing countries. Her research interests are disaster mitigation and reconstruction, looking at how communities and governments can prepare urban areas to be resilient to disasters and to adapt to climate change. She has done research on post-disaster temporary housing -- particularly looking at disaster recovery in Turkey, and on urban rehabilitation and Romani communities in Istanbul. She has also conducted research for Natural Resources Canada on the use of photovoltaics in new housing developments. She holds a lectureship at Development Planning Unit, University College London, where she co-directs an M.Sc. course in Building and Urban Design for Development. She has received her Ph.D. from Université de Montrèal, a Master of Architecture from McGill University, a B.A .in urban studies from Concordia University in Canada, and she has been a visiting researcher at Istanbul Technical University in Turkey. She is a founding member of i-Rec, a network dedicated to providing information to specialists in reconstruction. Languages are English (mother tongue) and French.
Melissa Keeley
Melissa Keeley’s research focuses on urban water resource management and lies at the intersection between urban ecology, engineering, and environmental policy and planning. Her interests include watershed management, land use planning, and the environmental services provided by urban vegetation, and her work contributes a comparative, transatlantic dimension to these topics. She previously worked as a stream restoration ecologist in Philadelphia, and then at the Berlin Environmental Ministry and the Ecologic Institute of International and EU Environmental Policy. She now regularly consults governmental agencies such as the EPA and HUD, and advises decision-makers in cities including Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Seattle. She has received numerous awards, including the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, Robert Bosch Foundation Fellowship, and Fulbright Fellowship (declined). Keeley’s studies have taken her to the universities of Hamburg (in Germany) and Washington (in Seattle), Ohio State and Harvard; she received her doctorate in Environmental Engineering from the Technical University of Berlin.
Website: www.melissakeeley.com
Mary Nyasimi
Mary Nyasimi is a Kenyan and holds a Ph.D. in sustainable agriculture/anthropology. She received her Bachelor's degree in natural resource management from Egerton University, Kenya and a Master's and Ph.D. from Iowa State University in 2006 and 2007 respectively. Prior to pursuing her Ph.D. studies, Mary worked with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in western Kenya where she was involved in developing and disseminating environmentally sound and profitable agroforestry technologies among small-scale farmers. In particular, she was involved in analyzing socio-cultural practices that promote or hinder adoption of agroforestry technologies. At Iowa State University, She was instrumental in facilitating the process that created the Center for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods (CSRL) in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The objective of CSRL is to empower local people to achieve food security and sustainable livelihoods in Uganda. Ms. Nyasimi values opportunities for constructive dialogue around contentious issues and policies that affect rural families, collaborative and creative partnerships and interdisciplinary research that contributes to sustainable livelihoods in Africa.
Gretchen Loeffler Peltier
Gretchen Loeffler Peltier received her M.P.H. in environmental health science from Columbia University and her Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Georgia. Her doctoral research focused on the accumulation of trace elements in aquatic food webs and potential risks to human health and aquatic organisms. She is driven by the belief that accessibility to clean water is a basic human right, and improving water quality is instrumental in diminishing health disparities. Her research is focused on this principle drawing upon her diverse backgrounds in engineering, public health, and ecology. As a Fellow, she will be exploring strategies for improving health outcomes, particularly in children, that are directly related to water quality in the Millennium Villages.
Kenny Shirley
Kenny Shirley is a statistician who works on a variety of applied statistics projects in the areas of social science and public health. He received his Ph.D. in statistics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2007, having written his thesis on hidden Markov models for alcoholism treatment trial data. His areas of interest in statistics include hidden Markov models, time series models, MCMC methods, and causal inference. At the Earth Institute, he is focusing on statistical models for daily rainfall time series, with applications to the design and pricing of index insurance contracts.