Nabil Z. Nasr, Ph.D.
Associate Provost for Academic Affairs & Director of Golisano Institute for Sustainability
Rochester Institute of Technology
BIO
Dr. Nabil Nasr is Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and Director of Golisano Institute for Sustainability at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). Dr. Nasr’s research interests focus on remanufacturing, circular economy, life cycle engineering, cleaner production and sustainable product development, and he is considered an international leader in research and development efforts in those disciplines. Nasr is also the founding Chief Executive Officer of the REMADE Institute, providing oversight of node-level research roadmap development as well as corporate engagement of the Institute’s partners. This national coalition is working on new clean energy initiatives, focusing on driving down the cost of technologies essential to reuse, recycle and remanufacture materials such as metals, fibers, polymers and electronic waste. Dr. Nasr currently serves as a member of the International Resource Panel of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). In addition, he has been an expert delegate with the U.S. Government in several international forums such as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), United Nations, World Trade Organization, and the OECD. He also serves as a trustee with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. He holds an MS and PhD in Industrial & Systems Engineering from Rutgers University.
Mario Herrero, Ph.D.
Professor of Sustainable Food Systems and Global Change
Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability
BIO
Mario Herrero is a professor of sustainable food systems and global change in the Department of Global Development and a Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences. At Cornell Atkinson, he serves as a Cornell Atkinson Scholar and Senior Faculty Fellow.
His research focuses on increasing the sustainability of food systems for the benefit of humans and ecosystems. He works in the areas of sustainable intensification of agriculture, climate mitigation and adaptation, livestock systems, and healthy and sustainable diets. He has worked extensively in Africa, Latin America and Asia and contributed to global initiative such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Lancet Commission on Obesity, and the EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. Before joining Cornell, he was Chief Scientist of Sustainability, for Australia’s National Science Agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
Destenie Nock, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Engineering & Public Policy
Carnegie Mellon University
BIO
Dr. Destenie Nock is a leader in energy justice, energy justice, and sustainable energy transition trade-off analysis. In her role as an Assistant Professor in Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE), and Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) she creates optimization and decision analysis tools which evaluate the sustainability, affordability, and reliability of power systems in the US and Sub-Saharan Africa. In another project she is creating a new measure of energy poverty to help utility companies identify energy limiting behavior in low-income households, a hidden form of energy poverty. Dr. Nock is also the CEO of Peoples Energy Analytics, a data driven company which uses energy analytics to identify energy poverty in vulnerable households. Prior to her current position at CMU, Dr. Nock received her PhD in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She earned a MSc in Leadership for Sustainable Development at Queen's University of Belfast, and two BS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Applied Math at North Carolina A&T State University.
John Robinson, Ph.D.
Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy
University of Toronto
BIO
John Robinson is a Professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto, where he is Co-Chair of the President’s Advisory Committee on the Environment, Climate Change and Sustainability.
Prof. Robinson’s research focuses on sustainable buildings, neighbourhoods, and cities; climate change mitigation, adaptation and sustainability; participatory backcasting and scenario analysis; transdisciplinary knowledge co-production; sustainability transitions and transformations; art and sustainability; the role of the university in sustainability transitions; and the history and philosophy of sustainability.