Dr. Thomas Wild is currently an Assistant Research Professor at the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland. He is also jointly appointed as a Research Scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Joint Global Change Research Institute. Broadly, his research focuses on identifying holistic solutions to complex systems challenges that occur at the intersection of disciplines. He seeks to craft methodological advances capable of improving the way we characterize, visualize, and manage coupled human-natural systems confronting uncertainty and change, and the infrastructure that drives their interactions. His work has spanned planning and management challenges in water resources and environmental systems, food-energy-water nexus systems, and deep decarbonization. This research has contributed to identifying and mitigating food-energy-water tradeoffs and conflicts, developing sustainable hydropower systems, managing fluvial and stormwater quality, equitably sharing transboundary resources, and identifying pathways for deeply decarbonizing the U.S. and Colombian economies. He has extensive international development experience related to water and energy infrastructure, including multiple projects in Asia and Latin America. In these projects, he often served in a stakeholder engagement and capacity building role, training multidisciplinary groups to understand and use complex modeling tools. Dr. Wild holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University in civil engineering, and a B.S. degree from the University of Maryland in civil engineering.

Dr. Jonathan Lamontagne is an Assistant Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Tufts University. His research focuses on planning and management of multisector, multi-scale coupled natural-human systems confronting change. He seeks to identify and characterize key uncertainties in order to provide actionable insights to decision makers in multisector systems. His past work has contributed to emerging Federal flood risk guidelines in the U.S., the optimal management of North American transboundary water-energy resources, and the development of a novel global change scenario discovery procedure. Dr. Lamontagne holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental water resources systems analysis from Cornell University, and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of New Hampshire. Before joining the faculty of Tufts University, he worked as a postdoctoral scholar at Cornell University.

Dr. Dave White (Project Director) is Deputy Director of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University. In this role, he is responsible for research strategy, development, and advancement in support of 550+ researchers in the ASU sustainability scientists, scholars, and fellows network. Dr. White also holds appointments at ASU as Director of the Decision Center for a Desert City, and Professor in the School of Community Resources Development. White is internationally recognized for his contributions to science in support of sustainability, advancing numerous fields including decision science, science and technology studies, and sustainability science. His current projects include an NSF-funded effort on waterenergy-food nexus modeling in Uruguay and Argentina (with Wild, Clarke, Khan, Lamontagne, and Mirrales-Wilhelm); an NSF-funded grant to develop a food-energy-water nexus model and decision support system in Phoenix, Arizona, and a NASA-funded project to develop a hydroclimate modeling framework to support water resources management decision making. Previously, Dr. White completed an IDB-funded project to develop an integrated modeling decision support system for adaptation to drought and climate change in Pernambuco, Brazil. White has published more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and raised more than $34 million in research funds, as part of collaborative research teams, from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and IDB, among others. Dr. White will be the principal point of contact to IDB and ACTO for this project, manage the proposed project activities, and oversee the production of deliverables and progress reports to IDB-ACTO.

Dr. Mohamad Hejazi is a research scientist with the Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI) and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He holds a Ph.D. (2009) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a B.S. (2002) and M.S. (2004) degrees from the University of Maryland, College Park. His research interests include: global hydrologic modeling, global and regional sectoral water demand models, separating the effect of climate change, human activities, and climate policies on hydrology, and the value of information (e.g. weather and climate forecasts) to human decisions (e.g., farmers, reservoir operators). Prior to joining JGCRI-PNNL, he worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and as a research assistant at the USGS and the Illinois Water Survey.

Dr. Leon Clarke is the Research Director for the Center for Global Sustainability (CGS) and a Research Professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. Dr. Clarke is an expert in energy and environmental issues, with a focus on climate change, climate change mitigation strategies, energy technology options, and integrated assessment modeling. Dr. Clarke focuses on the use of quantitative methods and modeling in support of policy and other decisions. Current activities include low-emissions development strategies in China, India, and Latin America, energy-water-land planning in Latin America, and climate mitigation by U.S. cities, states and businesses. As Research Director, Dr. Clarke oversees the development and execution of CGS’s research portfolio. Dr. Clarke formerly led the Integrated Human Earth System Science Group and directed a range of integrated assessment modeling activities at the Joint Global Change Research Institute, a collaboration between the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Maryland. Dr. Clarke has served as an author and coordinating lead author for the IPCC, the National Climate Assessment, and the National Research Council. He is currently a coordinating lead author in the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report. He has also led several multi-institution modeling studies on climate mitigation.

Dr. Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm is a hydrologist with research interests in modeling of surface and groundwater systems, climate-hydrology-vegetation interactions, water quality and modeling of the water-energy-food nexus. He has been a Principal Investigator in research sponsored by NASA, NOAA, NSF, USDA, USAID, the World Bank and other agencies, and has worked as a consultant in water resources projects in all five continents for over 20 years. He also spent 5 years as a civil servant (Lead Specialist) in the Water and Sanitation Division of the InterAmerican Development Bank in Washington DC, where he initiated and led the development of HydroBID and the portfolio of water-energy-food nexus projects in the LAC region. He is a member of the UN-appointed Science Panel of the Amazon (SPA) as subject matter expert in ecohydrology, climate change and nexus issues in the basin. He earned a Mechanical Engineering diploma from Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela (1987), a MS in Engineering from the University of California, Irvine (1989), and a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1993). Fernando is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and a Diplomate of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers.

Brinda Yarlagadda is a PhD student in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. Her research is focused on regional and sub-regional modeling of food-energy-water nexus systems in Argentina and Uruguay, and their connections to policies at national and global scales. Prior to joining UMD, she was a post-bachelors research assistant at the Joint Global Change Research Institute. There she modeled air pollution, energy system, and climate mitigation policies and interactions in India, China and elsewhere using the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) and contributed to model development. Brinda holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering from the University of Michigan.

Glorynel is a Ph.D. student in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University, where she also served as a Graduate Teaching Associate. Her research focuses on comprehensive analysis for water resource management, strategic planning, decision-making, and collaborations to drive sustainable transitions. Glorynel holds a master’s degree in urban-territorial planning, and a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of Puerto Rico, and a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico. She has over ten years of professional experience, inside and outside of the academic environment. Before joining ASU, Glorynel was an IGERT Fellow at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, and as a Graduate Research Assistant at the National Institute of Energy and Island Sustainability. There she coordinated the Energy Stakeholders Forum for multi-sectoral dialogue on Puerto Rico’s energy policy. She has participated in numerous initiatives to advance sustainability, including first Puerto Rico’s Sustainable Agritourism Guide and the first estimate of the Puerto Rican’s Water Footprint. Glorynel also served several terms as a member of the board of directors of the U.S. Green Building Council, Caribbean Chapter. As an interdisciplinary pracademic, Glorynel is committed to the effective transfer of scientific knowledge outside the academic environment, to use this science to support informed decision making.

Abigail Birnbaum is a PhD student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Tufts University where she focuses on understanding risk and uncertainty in water resources management and planning. Specifically, her work focuses on the characterization, incorporation, and visualization of uncertainties acting at different scales in food-energy-water nexus decision making processes in Argentina and Uruguay. Abby holds a master’s degree in earth system science from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Cornell University.

Dr. Mengqi Zhao is a postdoctoral associate at the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on basin-scale integrated water resource management at the Food-Energy-Water Nexus. She is interested in studying the connections and feedbacks among environmental, ecological, social, and economic systems. Her work involves developing system dynamics modeling as an interactive tool for stakeholders to gain insights on adaptative management under future climate change. Her interests also extend to understand the impact of land use change on hydrologic patterns, physically based and gridded hydrologic modeling, and sensitivity and uncertainty analysis. Dr. Zhao holds a Ph.D. degree in civil engineering from Washington State University. She completed her M.S. degree in hydrology and water resources from Hohai University and B.S. degree in hydrology and water resources engineering from North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power.