Researchers
MCP Candidate
Jessie is a Master in City Planning student at MIT with a concentration in Environmental Policy and Planning. She has a B.S. in Biology and Urban Studies and Planning from MIT, and recently she has worked with the USEPA to study the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water resources. In addition to climate change adaptation, her research interests include environmental justice, hydraulic fracturing, and the intersection of environmental and land use law.
MCP Candidate
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.
CARRI HULET
MCP Candidate
Carri is a Masters in City Planning student at MIT with a concentration in Environmental Policy and Planning. She has a B.A. in Political Science from Tufts University. Carri worked as a public policy mediator and consultant prior to coming to MIT. Currently, she is an intern with the Consensus Building Institute, and works on the New England Climate Adaptation Project with the town of Dover, New Hampshire and the Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve.
TORAL PATEL
MCP Candidate
Toral is a first year Master's student in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, with a concentration in Environmental Policy and Planning. After graduating from Middlebury College with a B.A. in Geography and Political Science, she worked in a variety of fields including spatial analysis and cartography, climate change mitigation and forestry research, and transit-oriented development policy advocacy.
TIANA RAMOS
MCP Candidate
Tiana Ramos is obtaining her Bachelors in Environmental Studies and Economics at Wellesley College. She is an Environmental Protection Agency Fellow, having interned in the Office of Policy and Management at Region 2 in New York City. At MIT, she is helping research how the town of Cranston, Rhode Island can adapt to climate change, as well as assisting in administrative tasks.
ERICA SIMMONS
MCP Candidate
Erica is a Masters in City Planning student at MIT with a concentration in Environmental Policy and Planning. She has a B.A.S. in Archaeology and Geological and Environmental Sciences from Stanford University. Before coming to MIT, she worked as an open space planner for a regional parks agency in the San Francisco Bay Area, developing plans for recreation and natural and cultural resource protection. She is originally from Northeast Maine and is currently working with the Science Impact Collaborative to help coastal New England plan for the impacts of climate change.
PhD Candidate
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.
PhD Candidate; MA, Political Science, University of Amsterdam
Mattijs van Maasakkers is a PhD-candidate in environmental policy and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is also the Assistant Director of the MIT Science Impact Collaborative. Van Maasakkers is also a fellow in the Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. His dissertation focuses on the creation of markets for ecosystem services in the United States. In this dissertation, he examines the development of these institutions by analyzing what kinds of new practices are emerging related to collaboration, regulation and scientific information. At the MIT Science Impact Collaborative he works on the analysis and development of effective conflict resolution techniques in environmental disputes. Van Maasakkers has conducted research on environmental conflicts in the United States, the European Union and South Africa. He has worked with the United States Bureau of Reclamation, the United States Geological Survey, the National Audubon Society and the Consensus Building Institute on the assessment and intervention in environmental conflicts in the Columbia and Mississippi River basins in the US. Van Maasakkers has taught a graduate course on environmental conflict at the Heller School in Social Policy and Management at Brandeis for the past two years, and has teaching experience assisting in graduate and undergraduate courses on environmental policy, public dispute resolution and research design, both at MIT and Harvard. While at MIT, Van Maasakkers has received a Master’s in City Planning. Before coming to MIT, he received a Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, he also worked on the creation of the Amsterdam Center for Conflict Studies.
PhD Candidate
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.
PhD Candidate
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