Researchers

Melissa is a Masters in City Planning student at MIT with a concentration in Environmental Policy and Planning. She has a B.A. in Geography from U.C. Berkeley and has experience providing consulting to local governments on smart-growth and economic development planning. Before coming to MIT she worked at a foundation on strategic grant-making to advance energy efficiency policy in the U.S. She currently works on helping cities adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Jenna is a second year master’s student at DUSP where she is concentrating on Environmental Policy and Planning. She has a BA in Earth and Environmental Science from Wesleyan University and spent several years as a teacher and outdoor educator for struggling teens before returning to school. Currently she works on the SIC Massachusetts Climate Change Adaptation project and is writing her thesis on two cases of collaborative and adaptive natural resource management in the southwestern US.

Danya is a doctoral candidate in Environmental Policy and Planning at MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Her research focuses on collaborative, adaptive environmental governance and consensus-based decision making in the context of science intensive environmental disputes. A 2007 US Fulbright Scholar to New Zealand, Danya holds an MS in Environmental Management from the University of Auckland and a BS in Environmental Science and Resource Economics from Oregon State University. As a professional science writer, researcher, and outreach specialist, she has worked with a broad range of organizations, including the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, the Small Planet Institute, and the New Zealand Centre for Sustainable Cities.

Tijs has worked with the University of Amsterdam and the city of Amsterdam to set up the Amsterdam Center for Conflict Studies. He interned at the Consensus Building Institute and the Office of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein. At DUSP, he has worked with federal agencies like the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Geological Survey to develop new methods of combining a participatory decision-making process with robust scientific input in public disputes. Currently, he is working on water management issues, ecosystem restoration, and stakeholder participation in the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana. He is collaborating with TNO, a Dutch research organization, to do research on stakeholder participation and the use of scientific information in river basin management in the European Union.

Todd has an MCP from MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning. His professional experience includes working with both civil servants and non-governmental organizations across Central and Eastern Europe on governance for sustainability and capacity building projects. In the course of his Masters work, Todd looked at climate change adaptation planning in both South Africa and China. Todd worked with the Consensus Building Institute on various projects, including the development of a course on facilitating climate adaptation planning.  As part of the MUSIC program, Todd is working with and funded by the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). He is working on the nascent Cities and Climate Change project.

Leah is a PhD student in Environmental Policy & Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has an MPA from Columbia University in Environmental Science and Policy and a BSc from the University of Toronto in Psychology. Her research focuses on the use of science in international environmental negotiations and the politics of renewable energy policy. For more information: mit.edu/lstokes