ECOTECHNICS - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Director of the Institute

Christine Ruth Handte is a Director of the Institute of Ecotechnics (UK/USA) and a Director of Ecotechnics Maritime (UK). She was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Ecotechnics (I.E.) for her work with the Research Vessel Heraclitus and is a member of the Explorers Club. She joined the crew of the R/V Heraclitus in 1986 and has made Heraclitus and its ecological, cultural, theater and artistic projects the focus of her life. Her first expedition was the "Around the Tropic World Expedition" from Corsica to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Christine conducted a wild dolphin study around Warsaw Island, Georgia as part of the first successful release of previously captive dolphins, a project of Heraclitus and the ORCA Foundation. She managed cetacean studies during the ship's 1987-1989 ‘Circumnavigation of South America'. In 1989, Christine was a key member of the team that successfully raised and restored the ship which was sunk in San Juan harbor during Hurricane Hugo, including salvaging the 1,000 book onboard library. Christine was captain of the Heraclitus from 1990-1995, concentrating on coral reef and mangrove studies in Belize and elsewhere in the Caribbean, assisting in coral and fish collections for the ground-breaking Biosphere 2 project in Arizona. She was Expedition Chief and Chief Administrative Officer of the Planetary Coral Reef Foundation (PCRF) during the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian archipelago coral reef health and vitality studies aboard the Heraclitus. From 2000-2003, she served as the Education Officer for the October Gallery in London doing school and public outreach for a gallery which showcases cutting edge artists from around the world. She initiated and coordinated exhibitions showcasing art and photography of Heraclitus Expeditions for galleries in London, Berlin and Singapore. She rejoined the Heraclitus for its longest continuous voyage, 4.5 months, across the North Pacific in 2003. Since 2006, Christine has again served as Heraclitus' Expedition Chief. Recent expeditions have included the Coral Sea to Mediterranean Sea, and Lives and Legends of the Mediterranean Sea' oral history project documenting sea peoples, in cooperation with the Ethnological Museum of Valencia, Spain and the port office of Marseille, France. She has directed and performed in over 30 theater productions of the onboard "Blue Planet Ensemble" in ports around the world. Fluent in German, English and Spanish, she has also traveled extensively in China, Tibet, Australia, Indonesia, Iran, South America and the United States. Currently, she and the Captain are co-directing the complete rebuild of the R/V Heraclitus in Roses, Spain, and will serve as Expedition Chief during its 2020-2025 Sea People Expedition to West Africa, Brazil and the Caribbean.

Job Titles:

• Captain of the Research Vessel Heraclitus
• Captain, Research Vessel Heraclitus / Director

Claus Tober is the captain of the Research Vessel Heraclitus and has engaged in several expeditions worldwide since 1995. He is a Director of the Institute of Ecotechnics UK and of Ecotechnics Maritime, Ltd.

Job Titles:

• Director of the Institute
• Education & Outreach Director

Deborah Parrish Snyder has been a publisher and campaigner for sustainable futures and planetary stewardship for over 30 years. As the principle director of Synergetic Press since 1984, she has published more than 40 books on topics as diverse as the environment, ethnobotany, psychedelics, consciousness, cultural anthropology, and vanguard fiction and poetry. During the eighties, Deborah began work with the team of people at Space Biosphere Ventures in Arizona where they were designing and building Biosphere 2, the world's largest laboratory for global ecology. As acting Editor-in-Chief, her first book was The Biosphere Catalogue, an environmental science publication taking an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the Earth's biosphere, with contributions from some of the world leading figures in the biological and technological fields. She helped to develop the educational programs at the visitor's center and created a unique class of curriculum focusing on the new study of biospherics. In 1990 she founded and directed Biosphere Press, the publishing division for Space Biospheres Ventures, and produced over a dozen books, educational videos, and curriculum titles about the lessons being extracted from the rich 2-year experiment lasting from 1991-1993. Mission One, as it was called, still holds the world's record for human life-support in a closed system, with a crew of eight people sealed inside the glass complex with less outside input than on the International Space Station. The experiment gave us great insight into the dynamic of biospheric systems and was a pioneer in the field of environmental engineering. Deborah is a Director of the Institute of Ecotechnics, a non-profit ecological think-tank, helping to manage a number of the international conferences it has hosted over the years on global trends in the field of closed ecological systems. She is also Executive Vice President of Global Ecotechnics Corporation (www.globalecotechnics.com), an international project development and management company, with special focus on the pastoral regeneration on a small way station in NW Australia, Birdwood Downs. She is a Trustee of the London-based October Gallery, which showcases transvangard artists from all around the world. Deborah was born in 1958 in Normal, Illinois.

Job Titles:

• Chairman
• Director
• Member of the Ecotechnics Board of Directors
• Chairman of the Institute

Dr. Mark Nelson is Chairman of the Institute of Ecotechnics, head of Wastewater Gardens International and has worked for several decades in closed ecological system research, bioregenerative space life support, ecological engineering, restoration of damaged ecosystems, desert agriculture and wastewater recycling. Dr. Nelson was a member of the eight person "biospherian" crew for the first two year Biosphere 2 closure experiment, 1991-1993. The project included pioneering regenerative agriculture and waste and water recycling. In the 1970s, he planted an organic fruit orchard at Synergia Ranch, Santa Fe NM and has helped manage its organic fruit and vegetable farm for decades. Mark is an Associate Editor of Life Sciences in Space Research. His books include "Pushing Our Limits: Insights from Biosphere 2" (2018) and "The Wastewater Gardener: Preserving the Planet One Flush at a Time" (2014). A second edition of "Life Under Glass: Crucial Lessons in Planetary Stewardship" written by Mark and two fellow biospherians was just published by Synergetic Press.

Job Titles:

• Writer

Gerard Houghton is a writer, art-critic and videographer based in London. Graduating from Churchill College, Cambridge, he spent two years in West Africa working as an interpreter. In 1980, he moved to Japan where he taught Literature and Linguistics at two of Japan's more prestigious universities. On his return to London, in 1994, he became Director of Special Projects at October Gallery, a central-London gallery specializing in contemporary art from around the planet. As well as writing essays, articles and catalogues he has edited a number of publications on the many international artists October Gallery represents. Since 2000, he has documented ancient traditions of dance in the Himalaya region, helping create a trove of 500 plus hours of dance footage held in the NYPL archives and available online.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Ecotechnics Board of Directors

Job Titles:

• Director

In the early 90s she served one year as a crew member on the Institute

John Allen, inventor and investor, conceived and co-founded Biosphere 2 - the world's first and by far largest laboratory to study global ecology. Biosphere 2 set world records in closed life system work: sealing tightness, 100% waste recycle and water recycle, and duration of human residence within a closed system (eight people for two years). To build knowhows required for Biosphere 2 Allen first conceived, invented, co-founded, and managed the start-up of nine other multi-vector projects, from tropical forests to savannahs to desert to ocean to world city, around the planet, based on sustainable biomes (biomes: level of organized complexity of life systems below biosphere).

Job Titles:

• Expert
• Geospatial Intelligence / Director

Manno França is an expert in geospatial intelligence and strategy, as well as a researcher in forest fire management in tropical regions. He worked as an advisor to the government in Brazil, where he coordinated the Department of Geospatial Intelligence and was responsible for the modelling and establishment of biological corridors and many hundreds of thousands of acres in protected areas in different biomes. During that period, he was also involved with the development of new systems to detect deforestation and platforms to make geographical information and environmental knowledge widely accessible to the public. He is the Co-¬Founder of EarthX, a new geospatial platform crafted specifically for storytelling and citizen engagement. EarthX believes that geospatial literacy and systems thinking are key to understanding our planet. Manno also acts as director, trustee and advisor to various cross-sector organisations in the UK, US, Switzerland, New Zealand, Brazil, Spain and Argentina. He joined the Edmund Hillary Fellowship in 2019 and, currently, lives in the mountains in southeast Brazil with his wife and daughter.

Job Titles:

• Finance, Secretary, USA / Director

From a young age Marie Harding has searched for new approaches to living, culture, and ecology. In 1964, while travelling around the world, she volunteered with Project Concern- a field hospital then serving the area near Dalat, Vietnam, during the middle of the Vietnam War. There she met John Allen, and together in 1969 they founded Synergia Ranch LLC., an intentional community with a large-capacity retreat center, organic garden, fruit-bearing orchard, and research facility located just south of Santa Fe, NM. In 1974, while at Synergia Ranch, Marie became a founding member of Institute of Ecotechnics Inc., NM, which went on to establish further cultural and ecological-minded projects around the planet. To the present day Marie has co-founded and been a director and/or financial officer of a number of the IE projects, often serving as the location scout for establishing the initial properties that now make up the diverse ecological holdings of IE and its subsidiaries. After a brief interlude in Oakland CA, where she constructed along with the rest of the IE crew an 82' Chinese junk made out of ferro-cement. Marie went on to captain the RV Heraclitus on its maiden voyage. Aside from its own projects, the Institute of Ecotechnics also maintains many collaborative and consultancy-based relationships with people and organizations of diverse backgrounds from all around the world. Marie has been integral to many of these partnerships, including from 1979-94, when she served as a Director of the Hotel Vajra in Kathmandu, Nepal. From 1974 - 1981, Marie was a co-founding Director of the innovative adobe construction company, Synopco Corp. of Santa Fe NM; and from 1983 - 94 served as a Director of the Caravan of Dreams, Performing Arts Center, in Ft. Worth, TX.. In 1979, Marie co-founded and remains a Director of the October Gallery, London, UK. Marie located and was a founding Director and CFO of Space Biospheres Ventures, the company that built the Biosphere 2 project near Oracle AZ, as well as serving on the board until 1994. In 1994, until present, Marie serves as Director, President, CFO of Global Ecotechnics Corp., Environmental and Eco-projects consulting, with offices at Synergia Ranch NM. Marie remains Manager of Synergia Ranch LLC since 1969. Marie has been a painter since 1960, with various exhibitions and a mural project for the Caravan of Dreams in Ft. Worth, TX on the History of Jazz and Blues, a Mural of Planetary Dances, and a Theater Mural of one of the Caravan of Dreams plays. She is presently engaged in a painting series with the subject of endangered-species.

Job Titles:

• Director

Omar Fayed is an entrepreneur, environmentalist, and businessman. He is CEO of ESTEE (Earth Space Technical Ecosystem Enterprises), based in Switzerland and Britain, that advocates human space exploration, space colonization, and sustainable human development within the biosphere. He is co-founder and CEO of EarthX, a data visualization and mapping company based on NASA's World Wind Project. He is chairman of Synergetic Press and a fellow of the Institute of Ecotechnics.

Job Titles:

• Communications Director
• Member of the Ecotechnics Board of Directors

Robert "Rio" Hahn is an explorer, photographer, filmmaker, painter, author, and speaker on altered states of consciousness. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Fellow, two-term international Director, and three-term San Diego Chapter Chair of The Explorers Club. The recipient of five Explorers Club Flags, he is a licensed sea captain, open water diver, founding member of the International Society for Ethnopharmacology, and holds the title of High Chief of Western Samoa. He received a B.A. from the U. of Pennsylvania in the Annenberg Graduate School of Communications, including an apprenticeship-in-residence to the renowned American photographer Minor White, Chair of the Dept. of Photography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His upcoming book will present to the public White's exercises for seeing in a heightened state of awareness. He is a co-founder, Fellow, Director, and past president of the Institute of Ecotechnics, whose research led to the Biosphere 2 Project, which he co-initiated. He participated in the design and construction of the Research Vessel Heraclitus for which he was the first licensed captain. He was Scientific Chief and overall manager for the Institute's ethnopharmacological Amazon Expedition, following which he served as overall manager and Expedition Chief for the Around-the-Tropic World circumnavigation expedition of the Heraclitus, during which he co-produced and co-directed Journeys To Other Worlds, a series of cultural documentary films from the expedition.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Ecotechnics Board of Directors

Job Titles:

• Member of the Ecotechnics Board of Directors
• Director of Tropic Ventures

Thrity Jal Vakil serves as Director of Tropic Ventures 1000-acre Sustainable Forestry & Rainforest Enrichment Project in Puerto Rico. 3t has worked on tree-id, selective harvesting, milling, and wood-drying operations for two decades, and in 2015 co-founded Puerto Rico Hardwoods. She has led sixty Earthwatch research teams, and has observed, measured, monitored, and planted, hundreds of trees. An Associate of the Institute of Ecotechnics since 1990, 3t has hands-on experience in a range of fields: ecology, event management, arts, expeditions, and theater. In the mid 90's she served three years as Assistant to the Expedition Chief on the RV Heraclitus, diving on remote coral reefs in the Red Sea & Indian Ocean and crossing the Atlantic and Mediterranean Oceans. 3t is Fellow of the Linnean Institute, a Fellow of the World Academy of Art & Science, and an accomplished artist.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Ecotechnics Board of Directors
• Systems Engineering Director
• Director of Systems Engineering and Chief Engineer for the Biosphere 2 Project of Space Biospheres Ventures