Sustainability Scholars
One destination. Many roads.
The University of Dayton is home to scores of faculty members and other researchers all across campus with scholarly interests in sustainability. The Sustainability Scholars program brings these scholars together to learn about, and celebrate, each other's work. The initiative seeks to foster new collaborations to understand and respond to humanity's grand challenges in sustainability in ways that are only possible by working across traditional disciplinary boundaries.
Ashley's professional interests in large-scale, complex capital projects include energy-efficient design, lean construction processes, and natural ecosystem restoration. His primary focus on project risk management helps ensure that these major projects achieve their performance and sustainability goals.
Chase's areas of interested are varied, but generally revolve around applying computer simulation models to evaluate the behavior of water resource systems. He is interested in applying low impact development techniques to reduce stormwater runoff and improve stormwater runoff quality and in applying Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to water resource systems.
Clarke is interested in how visual communication can promote awareness and practical knowledge of issues involving sustainability. His course “Design|Science|Synthesis” engages graphic design majors to address and understand scientific content toward an end of creating thorough, clear, and stimulating visual and textual representation. He and his students are currently working to design and implement an informative and educational system of signs for the Solar Prairie at Curran Place.
Collier is interested in optimal governance structures for common pool resource extraction. His current research uses experimental economics to evaluate the effectiveness of institutional arrangements commonly found in commercial fisheries.
Currie’s sustainability interest centers on the praxis of social justice law and the solidarity economy. As a practicing lawyer and educator, he focuses on how to create systemic change; specifically the role of attorneys in supporting community driven efforts to replace our capitalist economic model with one that centers people and the planet.
Estevez's research emphasis is in utilizing a tunable porous carbon material platform for various energy storage applications spanning rechargeable batteries to fuel cells and even supercapacitors. Recently, his interests have focused embedding nanoparticles within these porous carbon materials for various water treatment applications, from waste water to selective adsorption of specific contaminants.
Jablonski's sustainability interests are in education, outreach and advocacy while engaging the general public and faith communities on climate change issues, working with faith communities on environmental concerns and spirituality, and climate change's impacts on terrestrial ecosystems and plant reproduction.
As a photographer, Jennings is interested in how art and visual culture inform our notions of landscape and identity, and how these notions influence our active relationships to both the built and natural environment. As a socially-engaged artist, she is passionate about art used in the context of social change, with a specific focus on issues of food justice and immigration.
Kahandawala's interests are in energy and environmental sustainability. On the energy front, most of his work has been on bioenergy, biofuel, waste to energy and alternative energy technologies such as solar and hydrogen production. On the environmental sid, most of his interests and work have been identifying opportunities for waste disposal and repurposing and for pollutant formation, mitigation and remediation.
Sustainability is both a material and a moral issue. On the material side, Kallenberg teaches engineering ethics with an eye to sustainability as related to both engineering and manufacturing (extraction of raw materials, production and use of energy, our cultural addiction to petroleum-based plastic, etc.). On the moral side, his research in virtue ethics deals, in part, with a kind of cultural moral myopia that prevents us from seeing and attending to the urgency of climate change and its fallout.
Kunz is interested in the application of social psychology to sustainability. In particular, how do our own self-views impact our views of sustainability-related issues and our own sustainability-related behaviors?
McManamon's interests involve where optics and photonics interact with sustainability including autonomous vehicles, lidars for oil, gas, and water exploration, monitoring fracking for safety and environment, plus solar cells and monitoring wind around wind turbines.
Meek's research interests revolve around social norms' impact on environmentally sustainable behavior and how sustainability-oriented businesses differ from other businesses on a number of different dimensions and cultural values.
Sustainable development presupposes ecological explanation of why certain actions are acceptable while others must be avoided. One of Pâslaru's research projects examines the implicit and explicit standards of ecological explanations, some of which inform decisions for sustainable development.
Rahman is interested in the ways in which stories can affect our relationships with and impacts on our environment. As a literary scholar, she applies ecofeminist theoretical frameworks to the narratives she studies in order to imagine a more environmentally just future.
Rettig's interests include research and development of Internet of Things for both resource efficiency and conservation beginning with the Smart Campus, and including Internet of Things in all disciplines for student enablement from applied experience.
Schrader is interested in developing sustainable, solar-thermal energy and thermal sciences technological solutions in support of humanitarian challenges. He said these technologies must be developed while accounting for real-world economic and political systems, societal norms, and individual responsibility.
Taylor is interested in improved focus of engineered treatment effort, with the goal of finding sustainable practices away from the extremes of no control vs. high cost treatment for all (dilute and highly contaminated water treated as similar). Her past projects include preliminary work on use of biochar generated from local products for capture and return of phosphorus to crop land; and targeted treatment of storm water currently carried through combined sewers. In the future, she would like to explore barriers that inhibit or discourage waste diversion practices.
Usman's sustainability research interests include computational methods to approximate the solution of models from climate change, water waves, engineering, biology and medicine. Most realistic models involve nonlinear differential or partial differential equations. He says in order to simulate the outcome of a model it is important to develop algorithms to solve the model.
Dr. Vasquez is interested in developing value-added products from waste materials by using green chemistry approaches.
Yamada's interest and research areas include: chemical and electrochemical conversion of CO2 to hydrocarbons; hydrogen production, storage, and fuel cell technology; incineration and emission control technology; and remediation of perfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) contamination of ground water, soil, and biosludge. He recently obtained funding from the United States EPA for a study about PFAS and their contaminated biosludge incineration, an issue possibly confronting Dayton and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.