The talk will be held virtually via Zoom or in-person at 107 Norman Smith Hall, UMaine. If you are planning to attend virtually, complete the registration form to receive Zoom connection information.
Speakers:
Catherine Ashcraft, assistant professor, Natural Resources and the Environment; faculty fellow, Carsey School of Public Policy, University of New Hampshire
Weiwei Mo, associate professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of New Hampshire.
Dr. Catherine Ashcraft is an assistant professor of Natural Resources and the Environment and a faculty fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. She is interested in the human dimensions of ecological systems and focuses on how environmental policies and institutions are negotiated and designed to foster justice and respond to change, particularly in freshwater systems and climate adaptation planning. Her work has been published in interdisciplinary journals, including PLOS ONE, Climatic Change, Elementa, and Environmental Development. She co-edited the book The Politics of Fresh Water: Access, conflict and identity (Routledge). She is contributing to a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) to support sustainability learning in Ecuador. Other recent research includes an NSF-funded project to research decision-making about the future of dams in New England, a project on payment for hydrological services programs in Veracruz, Mexico, a U.S. Department of Agriculture funded project on flood risk management policy in New Hampshire, and a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration funded project analyzing institutional barriers and opportunities to implementing living shorelines in New Hampshire. She teaches courses in environmental policy and negotiation and public dispute resolution. She received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.S. from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from MIT.
Dr. Weiwei Mo is an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of New Hampshire. She got her B.S. degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China (2008), and her M.S. (2011) and Ph.D. (2012) degrees from University of South Florida. Before coming to UNH, she was a post-doctoral associate at Yale University. Mo’s expertise lies in sustainability and resiliency assessment, infrastructure system planning and management, and social-infrastructure-ecological systems modeling. She has led several National Science Foundation (NSF) funded projects, working on interdependent infrastructure systems management, spatial optimization of decentralized infrastructure systems considering user preferences, crowdsourced water quality monitoring, and drinking water emergency response and planning. She received an NSF CAREER award in 2021. She teaches undergraduate and graduate level classes, including environmental pollution and control, environmental sampling and analysis, systems analysis of the environment, and life cycle assessment.
