Cooperative Extension Faculty

Ecosystem Sciences

Matteo Garbelotto 

Matteo Garbelotto studies forest pathology, forest mycology, forest and tree management. His outreach programs include training citizen scientists to locate and identify trees infected with sudden oak death.

Theodore Grantham 

Theodore (Ted) Grantham's research program explores the effects of climate change and management actions on freshwater ecosystems, and the socio-economic and ecological benefits they provide. His extension and outreach activities are focused on the translation of research into sustainable, cost-effective solutions for managing water and the environment. He is also co-director of UC Berkeley's Cannabis Research Center.

Maggi Kelly

Maggi Kelly’s research and outreach program uses a range of geospatial data and analytics—from spatial modeling, remote sensing, drones, lidar, historical archives, surveys, participatory mapping, and the field—to gain insights about how and why California landscapes are changing, and what that change means for those who live on, use, and manage our lands.

Paul Mayencourt

Paul Mayencourt’s research merges the fields of structural design, forestry, and materials to explore low-carbon approaches for building structures by leveraging recent advances in manufacturing technologies and computational optimization. Mayencourt holds joint appointments in ESPM and the Department of Architecture.

Adina Merenlender

Adina Merenlender’s work in environmental problem solving includes the use of spatially-explicit decision-support systems for conservation planning. Merenlender created the UC California Naturalist program to foster a community of volunteer naturalists and citizen scientists trained and ready to take an active role in natural resource stewardship, conservation, and education.

Daniel Sanchez

Daniel Sanchez’s research and extension program focuses on the commercialization and deployment of energy technologies that remove CO2 from the atmosphere. He runs the Carbon Removal Lab, which aims to commercialize sustainable negative emissions technologies, and supports outreach to policymakers and technologists in California and across the United States on bioenergy, forest management, wood utilization, and climate policy.

Tom Scott

Tom Scott’s research and outreach focuses on wildlife conservation in fragmented and altered landscapes, including studies of wildlife movement, habitat use, and population biology in oak woodland, sage scrub, and riparian habitats.

Kristen Shive

Kristen Shive's work focuses on restoring fire to fire-adapted ecosystems, prioritizing areas for restoration, and understanding shifting fire regimes.

Rick Standiford (emeritus)

Rick Standiford researches resource economics, natural resource management and decision-making, silviculture, bioeconomic modeling, and hardwood management. His extension programming efforts focus on the education of non-industrial private forest landowners, monitoring hardwood rangelands, and continuing education of professional foresters growth.

Bill Stewart (emeritus)

Bill Stewart's research and outreach programs focus on reforestation practices and policies, forest management activities to improve forest stand growth and health, and the economics of improved utilization of wood products for climate benefits.

William Tietje 

William Tietje studies oak woodland ecology and the human impacts on wildlife. His outreach programming seeks to to educate, maintain, and manage California oak woodland.

Rob York

Rob York is co-director of Berkeley Forests. His research and extension program focuses on managing forests for modern objectives of resilience in the face of climate change and wildfire impacts. Currently, he is focusing on the topic of "pyrosilviculture," which is the use of prescribed fire for meeting various objectives as well as designing non-fire treatments that can increase the likelihood of using prescribed fire in the future.

Organisms and the Environment

Kent Daane

Kent Daane’s research focuses on the development of ecologically-based insect pest management systems. In his research projects, he works closely with farmers, the commodity boards, and other UC Cooperative Extension personnel to help share pest-control information with the public.

Vernard Lewis (emeritus) 

Vernard Lewis conducts research and outreach efforts that involve a broad and varied range of insect pest systems commonly found in homes. As an emeritus extension specialist, Lewis continues to contribute to structural and household pest projects and publications, and is involved in activities across campus that promote the recruitment and retention of underrepresented minorities and women in science.

Society and Environment

Kristin Dobbin

Kristin Dobbin's research and extension agenda focuses on water justice in California and the ongoing implementation of California's human right to water law AB 685. This includes characterizing existing barriers and inequities as well as exploring solutions with a particular focus on governance, policy, and planning.

Christina Getz 

Christina Getz conducts research and extension broadly related to social justice and labor in agriculture, with the goal of promoting sustainable and more equitable food systems.  Her outreach programing foci include social certification in agriculture, food safety regulation, immigrant and refugee farming, farmworker food security, the political economy of organic agriculture, and farm labor movements.

Jennifer Sowerwine

Jennifer Sowerwine’s research and extension programs engage diverse stakeholders across the food system to examine barriers and co-create solutions to achieve healthy, equitable, culturally relevant, and sustainable food systems. Through collaborative and participatory methodologies, Sowerwine examines the cultural politics of resource access and governance, and the relationship between bio-cultural diversity, food security, food sovereignty, and health.