Serendipity

I’ve been tasked with identifying people and initiatives across campus that are involved in Digital Media and Climate Change/Environment. It’s part of a push by the University for greater funding for digital media research. And as everyone seems to interpret the term digital media differently, I’m going to give it the broadest possible interpretation: if it involves doing things with computers (either as a primary research tool or as an object of study), it counts as digital media. Here’s my list of faculty across the University who are doing relevant research. Feel free to suggest more people, or to rearrange my categories…

Understanding Climate Change through Earth Systems Modeling

• William Gough, Sharon Cowling, Danny Harvey, Scott Munro, Jing Chen, John Desloges, Geography;
• Dick Peltier, Ted Shepherd, Dylan Jones, Paul Kushner, Kent Moore, Physics
• Jonathan Abbatt, Chemistry
• Greg Evans, Chemical Engineering
• Steve Easterbrook, Computer Science
• John Caspersen, Sean Thomas, Forestry
• John Coleman, Cell & Systems Biology
• George Arhonditsis, Ecological Modeling Lab, UTSC
• Ulrich Wortmann, Geology

Impacts of Climate Change and Adaptation

• Brad Bass and Monirul Mirza at the Centre for the Environment
• Marie-Josee Fortin, Arthur Weis, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
• Miriam Diamond, Virginia MacLaren, Dept of Geography
• the Education Alliance for a Sustainable Toronto (EAST)

Earth Systems Management (as in: how we manage forests, water supplies, land use, etc)

• David Martell, Mike Wotton, (FireLab) and Shashi Kant in the Faculty of Forestry
• Barry Adams, Brent Sleep, Phil Byer, Bryan Karney (Water/hydrology), Civil Engineering
• Tenley Conway, (land use and urbanization) Dept of Geography

Sustainable design and energy management (e.g. architectural design, urban planning, etc)

• Beth Savan, Sarah Wakefield at the UofT Sustainability Office (e.g. the St George Campus Greenhouse Gas Inventory)
• Tom Bessai, John Danahy, Ted Kesik, Faculty of Architecture
• Danny Harvey, Dept of Geography
• Matt Ratto, iSchool

Sustainable Transportation Systems

• Eric Miller (modeling) A. S. Shalaby, (simulations) Heather MacLean (lifecycle analysis), Civil Engineering

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Environmental Informatics

• Don Boyes, Vincent Robinson,Department of Geography

Policy and Decision Making

• Ingrid Stefanovic at the Centre for the Environment
• Anthony Wensley, Rotman
• Steven Bernstein, Munk Centre
• Greg Jamieson, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
• Eric Yu, Faculty of Information
• The Cities Centre