CBER - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the ADVISORY BOARD
- President, Iowa Farmer 's Union
Aaron is a fifth-generation family farmer from rural Polk County, where he and his family raise corn, soybeans, oats, and hay in both organic and conventional rotations. Aaron was elected to serve as the IFU president in 2016 and had served as the IFU vice president immediately prior to his election. He also has served as the executive director and legislative director for IFU and on the National Farmers Union Policy Committee. Aaron's father Phil is a past IFU vice president and board member, and Aaron was active in Farmers Union youth programs growing up. Aaron is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University and Treasurer of the North Polk School Foundation. He is a graduate of North Polk High School in Alleman, Iowa and earned a bachelor's degree in physcis from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Aaron has previously served on the North Polk School District Board of Directors, the Iowa Citizen Action Network Board of Directors, and various school and church communities. He is a member of Practical Farmers of Iowa and the Iowa chapter of the National Farmers Organization.
Job Titles:
- Agent - Based Modeling Human Factors
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Architecture / College of Design
Job Titles:
- Member of the ADVISORY BOARD
- Eat Greater Des Moines, Executive Director
Job Titles:
- Anderlik Professor
- Mechanical Engineering
- Professor of Mechanical Engineering / College of Engineering
- Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University
Baskar Ganapathysubramanian is the Anderlik professor in Engineering, with appointments in Mechanical Engineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. He directs a curiosity-driven, computational sustainability research group that leverages advances in data science, applied mathematics and high-performance computing to model, design, and controls real-world physical phenomena. From the application point-of-view, his group is particularly interested in energy, food, water and environment-related phenomena including large scale modeling of thermal flow physics in the built and near built environment, machine learning-enabled plant phenotyping, and data-driven coupling of complex simulators for decision support.
More infomation about Baskar Ganapathysubramanian: https://www.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering / College of Engineering
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- Student in Mechanical Engineering, Washington University, St Louis
Boshun Gao has a Master's degree from Washington University in St. Louis. Currently, he was a PhD student under Dr. Baskar Ganapathysubramanian's supervision from Iowa State University. His work involved developing a framework of immersed boundary method for finite element analysis to solve coupled Navier-Stokes and heat transfer for complex geometries.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Collaberators and Community Partners Team
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Assistant Professor, Industrial Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington
Caroline Krejci is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering at The University of Texas at Arlington. Her research focuses on the development of modeling methodologies for the analysis and sustainable management of complex sociotechnical systems, including regional food logistics and urban food recovery networks. Within the Iowa UrbanFEWS project, she is a member of the human systems modeling team developing an agent-based model that will represent the dynamic interactions, adaptations, and decision making processes of Iowa producers and consumers in a virtual environment. The model will be validated against human behavior data and will be used to simulate producer and consumer behavior in response to different policies aimed at increasing local food production and consumption. These experiments will yield predicted changes in land use and farming practices over time, which will be used to inform biophysical crop production models.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Architecture / College of Design
Job Titles:
- Member of the Collaberators and Community Partners Team
- Public Health and Overheating Topic Specialist
Job Titles:
- Member of the Collaberators and Community Partners Team
Job Titles:
- Member of the ADVISORY BOARD
- Owner, Campbell 's Nutrition
Job Titles:
- Student in Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, Iowa State University
Diba Malekpour Koupaei holds a master's degree in Sustainable Environments from Iowa State University (2018) and received her bachelor's degree from Art University of Isfahan in Architectural Engineering (2015). in recent years her main research activities have been concerned with energy efficiency in the built environment, specifically high-performance residential buildings in the urban landscape. In August 2018 she became an active member of the Sustainable Cities multidisciplinary research group, where she follows her passion for integrating the human dimension of energy consumption into the efficiency equation for mitigating and adapting to climate change. Currently, she is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at Iowa State University.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Department of Horticulture
Dr. Ajay Nair is an Associate Professor working in the area of Sustainable Vegetable Production in the Department of Horticulture at Iowa State University. The focus of his research, extension, and education program is on cover cropping, conservation tillage, nutrient management, soil amendments and health, and season extension strategies in vegetable production. He works closely with commercial vegetable growers, extension staff, industry representatives and stakeholders to meet the rising demand of locally grown produce and enhance the profitability and sustainability of vegetable production systems.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Associate Professor, Agriculture and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering and Food Science and Human Nutrition at Iowa State University. He teaches courses focused on sustainability and life cycle assessment. For almost two decades he has actively pursued research to improve manufacturing efficiencies and byproduct utilization, and has developed a variety of new applications, including enhanced feeds, foods, biofuels, bioplastics, biocomposites, industrial intermediates, and ingredients. Prior to his work at Iowa State, he was a Lead Scientist with the United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service. Before this, he worked for a design-build engineering company in Iowa, and was responsible for process and equipment design, as well as plant and site layout for industrial manufacturing facilities.
Job Titles:
- Student in Sustainable Agriculture Graduate Program, Natural Resource and Ecology Management, Iowa State University
Erin Huckins is an M.S. student in the Sustainable Agriculture program at Iowa State University, and is housed in the Department of Natural Resource and Ecology Management. Her research background includes urban agriculture and the influence of urban gardening on community. With the Iowa UrbanFEWS project, she is a member of the human systems modeling team, where she will develop a social network analysis that will represent consumer decisions and interactions within local food systems throughout Des Moines.
Evan creates graphics and presentation material for various activities and programs being carried out by the team. He also maintains the web page.
Farzad's research is in modeling 3D urban fabrics and testing building energy simulations.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering / College of Engineering
Job Titles:
- Morrill Professor, Natural Resource Ecology and Management, Iowa State University
Jan Thompson is Morrill Professor of Natural Resource Ecology and Management at Iowa State University. She conducts research on the integration of social and biophysical dynamics of land use in urban landscapes, ecology and restoration of remnant forest landscapes in the Midwest, and the role of trees to increase resiliency in urban environments. She directs the Urban Natural Resources, Ecosystems and Landscapes Lab at Iowa State. She participated in the "Big Data for Sustainable Cities Decision-Making" project funded through Iowa State's Presidential Interdisciplinary Research Initiative (PIRI, 2016-2019). She also conducts research on teaching and learning, focusing on formal collaborative learning and leadership development for students. She has authored over 75 peer-reviewed articles on a variety of aspects of natural resource ecology and management, primarily focused on urban landscapes.
Job Titles:
- Member of the ADVISORY BOARD
- External Affairs Manager, Des Moines Water Works
Job Titles:
- Member of the ADVISORY BOARD
- Sustainability Program Director, City of Des Moines
Job Titles:
- Member of the ADVISORY BOARD
- Partner, State Public Policy Group Essman Research
Job Titles:
- Member of the ADVISORY BOARD
- Director, Public Works for the City of Des Moines
Job Titles:
- Member of the ADVISORY BOARD
- Assistant Director Iowa Nutrient Research Center, Iowa State University
Dr.Stefanik's expertise is in wetland ecology and aquatic biogeochemistry. She has studied gaseous carbon cycling and vegetation succession in created and restored wetlands, as well as nitrogen and phosphorus transport through watersheds in the Ohio River Basin.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Collaberators and Community Partners Team
- Architecture
Job Titles:
- Member of the Collaberators and Community Partners Team
Job Titles:
- Member of the Collaberators and Community Partners Team
Job Titles:
- Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of the Center, Social and Behavioral Research, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Northern Iowa.
- Member of the External Evaluation Team
Kyle Endres is a member of the external evaluation team. He is Associate Director of the Center for Social and Behavioral Research and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Northern Iowa. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the University of Texas at Austin.
Job Titles:
- Sustainability Director, City of Des Moines
Job Titles:
- Project Coordinator With the Center for Social
- Project Coordinator, Center for Social & Behavioral Research, University of Northern Iowa
Lisa Green is a project coordinator with the Center for Social and Behavioral Research at the University of Northern Iowa, where most of her efforts are focused on program evaluation in higher education. Her background includes an MS in Geography and coordinating an NSF-NRT program on climate adaptation.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Collaberators and Community Partners Team
Job Titles:
- Member of the Collaberators and Community Partners Team
Job Titles:
- Lecturer of Mechanical Engineering / College of Engineering
Job Titles:
- Director
- Member of the Collaberators and Community Partners Team
- Director, Center for Social & Behavioral Research & Professor, Psychology, University of Northern Iowa
- Professor
Dr. Losch is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Social and Behavioral Research at the University of Northern Iowa. In addition to her administrative and teaching, she has designed and directed over 100 survey, evaluation, and applied social science research projects including a number in the areas of STEM education, public health, transportation, and public policy issues. She has directed numerous multi-year NSF project evaluations as well as program evaluations at the state and local level. Her research publications span survey and evaluation methods, social science and health disciplines. She is adjunct clinical associate professor at the University of Iowa College of Public Health and also serves on the Advisory Board for the University of Iowa College of Public Health. She is active in the leadership of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), the Association of Academic Survey Research Organizations. Dr. Losch also has an extensive background in human research participant protections including previous service as chair of the University of Northern Iowa IRB.
Job Titles:
- Emeritus Professor, Henry a. Wallace Chair for Sustainable Agriculture, Agronomy, Iowa State University
- Professor
Matt Liebman is a professor of agronomy and the H.A. Wallace Chair for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. His research, teaching, and outreach activities focus on ways to use ecological principles and processes to improve environmental quality and food security. Within the Iowa UrbanFEWS project, he is part of the modeling team evaluating how shifts in land use and farming practices would affect crop productivity, water movement, soil erosion, and nutrient discharge to surface and ground water. As a long-time member of the board of directors of Wheatsfield Cooperative Grocery in Ames, IA, he has developed a strong appreciation of how local and regional producers can supply Iowans with high quality food.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Scientist With the Center for Social and Behavioral Research
- Senior Research Scientist, Center for Social and Behavioral Research, University of Northern Iowa
Megan M. Ruxton is a Senior Research Scientist with the Center for Social and Behavioral Research (CSBR) at the University of Northern Iowa and is serving as part of the evaluation team for the Iowa UrbanFEWS project. At CSBR, she collaborates on several surveys, evaluations, and other applied social science research projects in the areas of education, STEM, public health, and natural resources.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Collaberators and Community Partners Team
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor in Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering at Iowa State University
- Professor, Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Iowa State University
Michael Dorneich is an Associate Professor in Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering at Iowa State University. His research interests focus on human-centered design, decision support systems, human-autonomy teaming, human-computer interaction, and increasing participation in STEM. Within the Iowa UrbanFEWS project, he is part of the human systems modeling team gathering human behavior data to inform agent-based modeling of producers and consumers. Data gathered through multiple methods will enable assessment of current practices, values, objectives, motivations, and barriers that influence choices, and how drivers could influence behavior for local food production and consumption. More broadly, the goal is to build data-intensive, replicable decision-making support systems that engage researchers, community stakeholders, and city officials in data collection and decision-making to create sustainable futures.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Collaberators and Community Partners Team
- Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Northern Iowa
- Psychology
Dr. Schwab is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Northern Iowa. His research interests concern the development of social norms, attitude and behavior change, and the use of social psychological theory to promote sustainable behaviors. Dr. Schwab has studied attitude and behavior change related to recycling, energy usage, and climate change. Within the Iowa UrbanFEWS project, he is part of the human systems modeling team. The human systems modeling team is working to better understand barriers and incentives influencing decisions to produce and purchase locally grown foods. Utilizing qualitative and quantitative data from current producers and consumers to better characterize and understand local food systems for the development of an agent-based model of decision-making dynamics surrounding local food production and consumption.
Nilufer Oran Gibson is a Ph.D. candidate in Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering at The University of Texas at Arlington. She obtained her B.S. in Chemical Engineering at Gazi University in Ankara, Turkey and M.S. in Engineering Management at The University of Texas at Arlington. Her current research focuses on agent-based modeling of the development and analysis of crowd-sourced solutions to address the needs of vulnerable populations, including volunteer-driven transportation networks for the older adults and urban food recovery networks for the homeless. She emprically develops agent characteristics and decision metrics based on the concept of personas and PAPRIKA methodology. She is a member of the human systems modeling team within the Iowa UrbanFEWS project, responsible to develop the personas of Iowa producers for the agent-based modeling of policy decisions to increase local food production and consumption. Her email address is nilufer.oran@mavs.uta.edu.
Job Titles:
- Associate Scientist, ISU Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Iowa State University
- Environmental Scientist
Phil Gassman is an environmental scientist whose research experience has focused on supporting the integration of environmental, economic and other models which have been used to assess policy scenario impacts for watersheds and other regions, and testing of field- and watershed-scale models. He will be working on the application and integration of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) ecohydrological model (https://swat.tamu.edu/) and the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) urban water quality model (https://www.epa.gov/water-research/storm-water-management-model-swmm) within the overall modeling system being developed for the Urban INFEWS project. These simulation research efforts will include analyzing cropping systems, management practices, hydrologic responses, and water quality impacts in urban and peri-urban landscapes located in and surrounding the Des Moines metropolitan area.
Rushi Patel graduated with a Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering in May 2023. He supported the team as an Undergraduate Research Assistant with the green wall data collection at the Mobile Diagnostics Lab (MDL). He also developed EnergyPlus Weather (EPW) files from collected weather data at the Mobile Weather Station in Des Moines. He was a co-author of the following paper: Passe, U., Fagubule, O., Patel, R., and Thompson, J. 2021. Utilizing a novel mobile diagnostics lab to validate the impact of vegetative wall coverings in building cooling load reduction. Proceedings of the 8th International Building Physics Conference, August 25-27, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Collaberators and Community Partners Team
- Data Management Systems
Job Titles:
- Member of the Collaberators and Community Partners Team
Job Titles:
- Member of the Collaberators and Community Partners Team
Advanced data analytics and machine learning, integration of intelligent autonomous decision-making, augment first principle driven models and enhance human decision-making abilities in a complex environment. Lab Info
Sydney Collin participated in the UrbanFEWS team research as the first-ever remote research intern from INSA Lyon - Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon. She contributed significantly to the green wall Energyplus modeling effort and the probabilistic CFD data model. Her main contribution is this paper: Collin, S., and U. Passe, (2022). Building a workflow to model a green façade in a graphical user interface for EnergyPlus. Resilient City: Physical, Social and Economic Perspectives. Proceedings of the Architectural Research Centers Consortium and European Association for Architectural Education International Joint Conference.
Job Titles:
- Undergraduate Student in Architecture at Iowa State University
Tanya Sharma was an undergraduate architecture student from Iowa State University. Ulrike Passe was her faculty advisor. Her area of research interest includes energy efficiency in the built environment. For the Iowa Urban FEWS project, she worked as a website developer.
Job Titles:
- Student in Environmental Science Graduate Program, Natural Resource Ecology, and Management, Iowa State University
Tiffanie Stone is a Ph.D. student in the Environmental Science program at Iowa State University and is housed in the Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management. Jan Thompson is her faculty advisor. Her research interests include sustainable urban food systems, food justice, agroecology, and the influence of policy on the environment. In the Iowa UrbanFEWS project, she will develop Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) models for the food system in Des Moines. These models integrate energy, water, and carbon dynamics associated with the food cycle. Her background includes an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota in Applied Plant Science and a master's degree in Agroecology from the Norwegian University of Life Science. Prior to this project, she worked as a Norwegian Peace Corps volunteer at an Agricultural Training Institute in Zanzibar and as a County Extension Director for Purdue University in agriculture, natural resources, and 4-H youth development.
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant Professor of Soil Science / College of Agriculture
Tássia Mattos Brighenti has M.S. (2013 - 2015) and a Ph.D. (2015-2019) degrees in Environmental Engineering from Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Associate under supervision by Dr. Philip Gassman, in the Iowa UrbanFEWS project. Her work involves the use of the SWAT model to evaluate the environmental and agronomic performance of a suite of cropping systems, including row crops, and perennial grasses and/or horticultural crops, across multiple watershed scales in the Des Moines area.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Architecture Director of ISU Center for Building Energy Research ( CBER )
- Associate Professor, Architecture, Iowa State University
- Full Professor of Architecture
- Member in the Architecture Department at ISU
- SBSE President - Elect
Ulrike Passe received her Diplom - Ingenieur degree (equivalent to a M.S. in architecture) in architecture from the Technical University in Berlin, Germany in 1990. She is a licensed architect in Germany, a member of the Bund Deutscher Architekten (BDA) and an International Associate of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Her work experience includes more than 15 years of professional practice in architecture specializing in energy efficient buildings and six years teaching and researching in architectural design and building technology at the Technical University in Berlin.
Passe has been a faculty member in the Architecture Department at ISU since 2006, where she teaches architectural design and environmental technologies,
Research Interests Passe was the Principal Investigator and Faculty Advisor to the ISU Solar Decathlon Team to build an entirely solar-powered house on the National Mall in Washington D.C in Fall 2009. The project involved interdisciplinary research into energy efficient building envelopes, passive and active solar technologies, passive cooling strategies and natural ventilation, green design and technologies, thermal comfort and bio-composite materials.
Further funded research includes "The fluid-dynamics of Air-Flow in Free-flow Open Space: An Architectural Approach to Energy Efficient Building", funded by the Boston Society of Architects Research Award 2007 and conducted in collaboration with Dr. Francine Battaglia, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech. Passe's interest expands into the history of environmental technologies and its position in the architectural curriculum. Passe is the recipient of the 2010 Impact Award from the ISU Alumni Association. Passe won for her leadership of ISU's team in the U.S. Dept. of Energy's Solar Decathlon competition. She has also been invited to speak at international engineering and architecture conferences, has given professional workshops and won the BDA Young Architect's Award in 1998 in Berlin, Germany.
Ulrike Passe teaches sustainable design and environmental technologies and serves as director for the Center for Building Energy Research at Iowa State. Her research focuses on the interaction of architectural spatial composition, climate, and energy consumption. In 2009 she led the ISU team in the US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon competition. Passe also led the building science plank in the five-year Iowa NSF-supported EPSCoR project "Harnessing Energy in the Biosphere to Build Sustainable Energy Systems," which transformed the Solar Decathlon Interlock House into a community research lab. Her exploratory NSF EAGER grant "Multi-scale material and dynamic thermo-fluid computational models for sustainable buildings" (2013-2016) studied the relationship between thermal dynamics and material properties in the historic Harran Houses in Turkey using novel computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling techniques. In collaboration with Dr. Francine Battaglia she published "Designing Spaces for Natural Ventilation: An Architect's Guide, (Routledge) in 2015. Two new research directions derived from the book: improving knowledge of the urban micro-climate around buildings and interactions of occupants with the buildings they occupy. She initiated the interdisciplinary "Big data for sustainable cities decision making" funded by ISUs Presidential Interdisciplinary Research Initiative (PIRI) to integrate human-building-microclimate interactions into urban energy models for urban resilience, which provided the basis for the collaboration among researchers working together in the Iowa UrbanFEWS project.
Job Titles:
- Student in Geological and Atmospheric Science, Iowa State University
Wei Chen is a Ph.D. student working with Dr. Yuyu Zhou. She got her master's degree in cartography and geography information systems from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. During her Ph.D. study, her main research activities have been concerned with the impact of urban climate on building energy use. For the Iowa UrbanFEWS project, she is currently working on the urban climate simulations using Weather Research & Forecasting Model (WRF).
Job Titles:
- Student in Geological and Atmospheric Sciences, Iowa State University
Yiming Wang has a master's degree from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (2018) and received his bachelor's degree from the China University of Geosciences in Beijing (2015). Currently, he is a Ph.D. student under Dr. Yuyu Zhou's supervision. His research interests include water use and hydrological models. In the Iowa Urban FEWS project, he will use Soil & Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) for the watersheds within Des Moines.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Collaberators and Community Partners Team
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor, Geological and Atmospheric Sciences, Iowa State University
- Department of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences
Dr. Zhou's research interests lie in the applications of geospatial technologies including remote sensing, GIS, geovisualization, spatial analytic tools, and integrated assessment modeling to understanding the problems of global environmental change (e.g., urbanization, urban heat island, ecosystem phenology, energy use and GHG emissions) and their potential solutions. His research focus has always been in quantifying spatiotemporal patterns of environmental change and developing modeling mechanisms to bridge the driving forces (both natural and socioeconomic factors) and consequences of environmental change so that the impacts of human activities on environment can be effectively measured, modeled, and evaluated.