Planetary Scholars

August Easton-Calabria is a master’s student in the Department of Entomology. They research the collective behavior in bumble bee populations and how aspects of the insects’ life histories shape their responses to a rapidly changing environment. Their work takes advantage of cheap and advancing imaging and tracking technology to monitor bumble bee colonies and to explore the population-level differences in their responses to stressors such as climate extremes and pesticide exposure. Their research is intent on understanding fundamental aspects of bumble bee behavior that can inform conservation efforts for these important pollinators. Currently, Easton-Calabria is studying the thermoregulatory capabilities of bumble bee colonies from different altitudes on Mount Hood in Oregon.

Advisor: James Crall, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology

H S Sathya Chandra Sagar is a conservation scientist and a field biologist. He is interested in understanding the ecological impacts of various human activities such as land-use change and hunting, while studying the effectiveness of conservation strategies such as protected areas, REDD+ and voluntary resettlement, to protect biodiversity in tropical forests. He uses a combination of traditional field-based methods and advances in technology such as soundscapes, along with policy research to tackle delicate issues and provide evidence for conservation advocacy.Previously, Sagar worked as a research assistant at the University of Cambridge (UK) studying the impact of bird trade on forest restoration efforts in Sumatra, Indonesia, and later under Indian Institute of Science’s (India) project studying mixed-species flocking in the Eastern Himalayas. Prior to that, he completed my MSc in a consortium of universities, specializing in Applied Ecology and Conservation from theUniversity of East Anglia(UK) through Erasmus Mundus fellowship. Sagar grew up in the Western Ghats growing coffee beside Bhadra Tiger Reserve and has been involved in conservation advocacy through the NGO, WildCAT-C since high school. He is a keen birdwatcher, loves his cups of coffee and is always eager to saunter around listening to the chorus of the wild.

Advisor: Zuzana Burivalova, M.Sc., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Forest & Wildlife Ecology, and The Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies

Ciaran Gallagher is a Ph.D. student in the Nelson Institute pursuing a degree in Environment and Resources and a certificate in Energy Analysis and Policy. Her research lies at the intersections of climate change, air quality, public health, and environmental justice. She quantifies public health co-benefits of energy and transportation decarbonization measures and aims to utilize high-resolution satellite data to examine environmental justice dimensions of air pollution.

Advisor: Tracey Holloway, Ph.D, Professor, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies

Nick Mailloux is a doctoral student in the Environment and Resources program in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. He is also pursuing a graduate certificate in Energy Analysis and Policy. His research interests lie at the intersection of climate change, energy policy and public health, and his work focuses on quantifying the air quality health benefits of the transition to a clean energy economy in the United States. Mailloux previously worked as a climate research and engagement specialist in the Climate & Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He earned his undergraduate degree in global environmental change and sustainability from Johns Hopkins University.

Advisor: Jonathan Patz, MD, MPH, John P. Holton Chair of Health and the Environment, Former Director, Global Health Institute, UW-Madison

Katie Tredinnick is a masters student studying public health at UW-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health and a second-year student at the School of Veterinary Medicine. Her research seeks to explore relationships between zoonoses, biosecurity practices and sustainable agriculture within the Ugandan livestock production sector. As she progresses through her academic career, Tredinnick strives to investigate the systems that influence and connect human, animal, and planetary health. When not studying, Tredinnick can be found hiking, biking, bird-watching, gardening or advocating for environmental justice.

Advisor: Dörte Döpfer, DVM, M.Sc., Ph.D, Associate Professor of Food Animal Production Medicine, School of Veterinary Medicine

Daniel Hayden is a first year doctoral student in the department of plant pathology. He a B.S. in plant biology while developing interests in Indigenous food sovereignty. Hayden’s current project is attempting to link soil microbial diversity to plant diversity and productivity in diverse cropping systems. Specifically, he studies heirloom and landrace maize varieties preserved and cultivated by Indigenous peoples. He works with the Oneida agricultural co-op, Ohelaku, Menominee Nation College, and local Indigenous growers. Hayden is an enrolled citizen of the Comanche Nation and values utilizing the traditional knowledge of Indigenous people to understand scientific mechanisms and drive the research from an Indigenous perspective.

Advisor: Richard Lankau, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Plant Pathology

Jules Reynolds is a doctoral student in Geography and Environment and Resources. She also holds a M.S. in Agroecology fromUW-Madison. As a political agroecologist, she researches the politics of climate change within the context of small-scale agriculture, and how these politics affect the health of farmers, agricultural systems and communities. She is particularly interested in how transformative agroecology can affect political, social and ecological change for our planetary health.

Advisor: Michael Bell, Ph.D., Chair and Professor, Department of Community and Environmental Sociology

Ben Iuliano is a doctoral student in the Department of Integrative Biology and a masters student in the Agroecology program, researching how we can make agricultural landscapes healthier for people and the rest of nature. His interests lie at the intersection of insect conservation, sustainable agriculture, and political ecology. He studies biological pest control by lady beetles in Southern Wisconsin, seeking to understand the spatial and temporal dynamics of this important ecosystem service.

Advisor: Claudio Gratton, Ph.D., Professor of Entomology

Martin Ventura is an entomology student exploring biodiversity and efficiency in systems for raising insects for human food and animal feed. He is dedicated to broadening the scope and scale of insect agriculture worldwide as a contribution toward addressing the complex problem of food insecurity. The principal aim of his laboratory research is to formulate low-cost insect feeds derived from common crop residues such as maize, stover and straw that have been inoculated with edible fungus. Ventura earned an undergraduate degree at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana.

Advisor: Susan Paskewitz, professor and chair, Department of Entomology; director, Midwest Center of Excellence for Vector Borne Disease

Sila Temizel Sekeryan is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering with a minor in Sustainability. She also works as a research assistant in theSustainability and Emerging Technology Research Group led by Andrea Hicks. Her research focuses on exploring the environmental and human health impacts of engineered nanomaterials and finding ways to mitigate the impacts associated with their lifecycles. She uses life cycle assessment methodology and systems thinking approach while assessing the environmental performances of products. She is also working on developing a methodology to evaluate human health impacts of engineered nanomaterials under mesocosm conditions.She is particularly interested in combining non-nanoscale (i.e. indirect) and nano-specific (i.e. direct) emissions resulting from each lifecycle stage to evaluate environmental and human health performances of these novel materials.

Advisor: Andrea Hicks, Ph.D., assistant professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Rebecca Alcock is currently a Ph.D student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Her studies focus on the intersection of product design and the social sciences to tackle global inequality, particularly in health. She has been fortunate to have interdisciplinary collaborations across campus, stemming from the Morgridge Institute for Research and the Grainger Engineering Design Innovation Lab, that have led to global health partnerships in Central America, East Africa, and Southern India. Outside of her academic activities, she is a volunteer for the non-profit Engineers Without Borders (EWB) and served as an EWB field intern in rural Guatemala after completing her undergraduate education in 2018. This experience exposed the institutions that create or reinforce inequality in EWB’s partner communities and strengthened Rebecca’s interest in improving the social determinants of health and designing equitable healthcare systems. In the fall, Rebecca will begin her Ph.D. studies in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and investigate a novel renewable energy and transportation network for underserved communities, centered around their local healthcare system. When not in the classroom or lab, Rebecca can be found at the state parks or on Madison’s lakes and ultimate frisbee fields.

Advisor: Justin Boutilier, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Industrial and Systems Engineering

Aida Arosoaie is a doctoral student in Cultural Anthropology and a graduate affiliate with the Center of Culture, History and the Environment, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. Arosaie’s research explores the process of relocation and resettlement of forest-dwelling communities in Southeast Asia in the context of deforestation and expansion of monocrop industrial plantations, employing a decolonial lens to focus on the intersection between extractive capitalism, environmental change and religion. Arosaie is particularly interested in investigating the interplay between processes of social re-inscription and materialities of the capitalist world-space. She aims to understand how capitalist zones of exclusion and disease rework and reorient corporealities, experiences of embodiment and sensory orientations, articulating personhood within a context of precarity.

Advisor: Maria Lepowsky, professor, Department of Anthropology

Lisa Charron is a doctoral candidate in the Environment and Resources program in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. Her research focuses on incorporating healthy eating and active living strategies in urban and regional planning policies. She earned her master’s degrees in Urban and Regional Planning and Public Health at the UW-Madison.She has served as a project assistant in the UW Population Health Institute and continues to work with the unit evaluating a variety of action research projects to incorporate health equity into local policymaking. She earned her undergraduate degree at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland.

Advisor: James LaGro, Ph.D., MLA, Professor of Planning and Landscape Architecture/ Environmental Studies

Yaa Oparebea Ampofo is a doctoral student in the Department of Educational Policy Studies with a concentration in Comparative and International Education. Her research interests lie at the intersection of education decolonization, environmental studies and sustainable development discourses. She is particularly interested in thinking through and within alternative and subaltern ecological frameworks of planetary health and her research compares the narratives, representations, and practices of environmental and sustainability education across indigenous, religious and Western-scientific discursive spaces in Ghana. Her work seeks to address how these different frameworks conceptualize human-environment interdependencies, socio-environmental change and responsibilization, with a focus on their capacities to capture the broad public imagination and influence public policy. Her goal is to deepen the understanding of environmental and sustainability education and create opportunities for new and powerful educational approaches to realizing sustainable human and planetary well-being.

Advisor: Nancy Kendall, professor and chair, Department of Policy Studies; director, African Studies Program

Jessica LeClair is a doctoral student and clinical faculty member with the UW-Madison School of Nursing, where she is integrating the concepts of planetary health and climate justice into undergraduate and graduate courses. She also holds an affiliate appointment with the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. LeClair co-chairs the Sustainable Madison Committee for the City of Madison.She has also served as co-chair for the Wisconsin Public Health Association’s Climate and Health Section and was a co-chair of the Global Nurses Climate Change Committee for the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments. LeClair previously worked as a public health nurse for Public Health Madison and Dane County, and as a community health nurse for the Ho-Chunk Nation. She has a B.A.from Oberlin College, a BSN from the UW-Madison, and an MPH from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Her research interest explores nursing strategies that promote environmental justice in the context of planetary health.

Advisor: Susan Zahner, DrPH, R.N., FAAN

Martin Ventura is a master’s student in Entomology exploring biodiversity and efficiency in systems for raising insects for human food and animal feed. He is a member of the Mission to Improve Global Health Through insects, MIGHTi,  research project. Ventura is dedicated to broadening the scope and scale of insect agriculture worldwide as a contribution toward addressing the complex problem of food insecurity. The principal aim of his laboratory research is to formulate low-cost insect feeds derived from common crop residues such as maize stover and straw that have been inoculated with edible fungus.

Advisor: Susan Paskewitz, professor and chair, Department of Entomology; director, Midwest Center of Excellence for Vector Borne Disease

Ben Iuliano is a doctoral student in the Department of Integrative Biology and a master’s student in the Agroecology program, researching how to make agricultural landscapes healthier for people and the rest of nature. His interests lie at the intersection of insect conservation, sustainable agriculture and political ecology. He studies biological pest control by lady beetles in Southern Wisconsin, seeking to understand the spatial and temporal dynamics of this important ecosystem service.

Advisor: Claudio Gratton, Ph.D., Professor of Entomology

Jonathan Lala is a doctoral student in Civil Engineering. His research focuses on the intersection of climate, water and human development, particularly through the use of climate forecasts for informed management of water resources. Lala’s research has spanned three continents and ranges from natural disaster preparedness to agricultural planning and effective communication of risk. He plans to focus his Planetary Health Scholarship work  on using forecasts to ensure household food security and reduce poverty for agricultural stakeholders.

Advisor: Paul Block, Ph.D., M.S., associate professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Ramin Ghamkhar is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering with a minor in Sustainability. His work focuses on the food-energy-water nexus and sustainability of food production systems. He uses the Life Cycle Assessment approach to evaluate the environmental impacts of different food production processes such as aquaponics. He is also compiling economic analysis and mapping techniques to incorporate fiscal and spatial parameters in the quantitative sustainability evaluations.

Advisor: Andrea Hicks, Ph.D., M.S., assistant professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Pearly Wong is a third year doctoral student in Cultural Anthropology and Environment and Resources. Her current research interest is in development, environment, sustainability and intersectionality, through a decolonizing lens. Wong’s dissertation examines changing discourses and practices of development and sustainability by community actors in Nepal in the context of rapid socio-ecological transformation, including climate change. Wong is particularly interested in looking at development as experienced through the intersection of gender and caste in semi-rural Kathmandu Valley. She is also looks at how resources are mobilized with and for these discourses and practices. She will focus on how insights at her field site converge or diverge from the rhetoric of ‘sustainability’ prominent in the development field today.

Advisor: Maria Lepowsky, Ph.D., professor, Anthropology

Jessica LeClair, BSN, MPH, is a doctoral student and clinical faculty member with the School of Nursing, where she is integrating the concepts of planetary health and environmental health into academic  courses. She  holds an affiliate appointment with the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. LeClair  has worked as a public health nurse for Public Health Madison and Dane County and as a community health nurse for the Ho-Chunk Nation. She co-chairs the Sustainable Madison Committee for the city and co-chairs the Global Nurses Climate Change Committee for the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments. Her research explores how to build the capacity of nurses to work in the context of planetary health with a focus on environmental justice.

Advisor: Susan Zahner, DrPH, RNR, FAAN, associate dean for faculty affairs and Vilas Disinguished Achievement Professor