Faculty Profiles

Dr. David N Bristow, P.Eng, is an Associate Professor in Civil Engineering, the Director of the Master of Engineering in Industrial Ecology program, and a Board Member of the Sustainable Urban Systems Subgroup of the International Society for Industrial Ecology. He is interested in how the component parts of infrastructure systems and cities interact, how we can make them more resilient to shocks and stresses and how we can make them more sustainable. His work includes advancement and integration of theory, methodology and practice in systems engineering and risk management using ecological, network, control system, optimization and thermodynamic approaches.

Dr. Heather Buckley, an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and green chemist who believes that responsible development of greener technologies is a core component to improving human and environmental health. Designing tools for better environmental monitoring and strategies for the proactive use of safer alternatives empowers communities and industrial partners towards environmental stewardship and better public health outcomes.
Our team seeks to empower communities in Canada and internationally through interventions at all stages of the drinking water supply chain. We are particularly interested in metals and other contaminations introduced through human activity.

Dr. Caetano Dorea is an Professor in Civil Engineering and leads the Public Health & Environmental Engineering (PH2E) Lab. His interests and expertise are at the crossroads of environmental and public health engineering. This includes the development and evaluation of sustainable water and sanitation/wastewater technologies, field- and operator-appropriate water/wastewater/ faecal sludge quality analytical methods, and functional ecology characterisation of biological treatment systems for safeguarding the health of the public and the environment. His activities are focused both on low-resource contexts (low- and middle-income countries, remote/rural communities, etc.) as well as high-income contexts.

Kristian Dubrawski is a specialist in water quality and technology, intersecting with community and ecological health. He was at UBC in Chemical/Biological engineering with RES’EAU WaterNet on drinking water in rural and Indigenous communities, where he was part of the interdisciplinary BRIDGE program and worked on environmental health in communities impacted by resource extraction. At UBC, he was a Liu Institute Scholar and the Director of Volunteers for Engineers Without Borders. Kristian then started his own water consulting company for small water systems, Ecological Water, as well as working with Indigenous Services Canada and other government agencies. His post-doc was at Stanford, on small-system wastewater energy, nutrient, and carbon resource recovery. At UVic, Kristian leads the Community Water Innovation Lab and holds the Canada Research Chair in Water Sustainability for Indigenous and Rural Communities.

Dr. David Dunne is Professor and Director of MBA Programs at Gustavson School of Business. His research explores how designers apply in-depth user research and creative thinking methods to "wicked problems"; critical, chronic problems in society and business with no clear start or end. His research has been published in business and design journals, including Harvard Business Review and Academy of Management Learning & Education. He has held appointments at design schools in the Netherlands, the US and Mexico. Dunne teaches design, strategy and marketing to students and executives worldwide.

Dr. Ralph Evins is an Associate Professor in Civil Engineering, following a Group Leader position at Empa and ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. His research includes: energy use in building and districts; smart cities; sustainable transitions; modelling of energy flows; optimization algorithms; data science and machine learning; academic software development. His Energy in Cities group at UVic are the developers of the BESOS Platform and the Net-Zero Navigator tool, as well as conducting projects with Natural Resources Canada and the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions.

Dr. Christina Hoicka is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Victoria. She has degrees in engineering, environmental studies and geography. Dr. Hoicka combines these perspectives into both teaching and research. Current areas of focus are to combine the fields of energy geography and sustainability transitions in order to investigate the actions of communities and the demand-side (households, firms, organizations) in mitigating climate change.

Dr. Chris Kennedy, P.Eng., FCAE, is a Professor, former Chair of Civil Engineering and former President of the International Society for Industrial Ecology. He was previously a faculty member at the University of Toronto, and a consultant with the OECD, supporting the Working Party on Climate, Investment and Development. He has been a visiting scholar at EAWAG/ETH Zürich (Urban Water Management); Oxford University (Transportation Studies); and UFZ Leipzig (Environmental Remediation). His research involves application of principles of industrial ecology to developing sustainable cities and global infrastructure systems.

Dr. Madeleine McPherson is an Assistant Professor in the department of Civil Engineering at the University of Victoria and the principal investigator of the Sustainable Energy Systems Integration & Transitions (SESIT) Group, with previous experience with National Renewable Energy Laboratory (USA), International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Austria), and Care International (Ghana). McPherson and her team are developing a platform to explore electrification and energy systems integration to co-create decarbonization pathways. Dr. McPherson serves as an Executive Member on the Energy Modelling Hub, which is convening a national dialog between modelers and stakeholders around decarbonizing Canada’s energy system. Her research includes: integration of variable renewable energy resources in electricity systems; demand response; energy storage; time series representation of global renewable energy data; energy markets; integrated assessment models; and climate change.

Dr. Adam Monahan is a Professor in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, and Member of the University of Victoria Climate Group. He served as Chair of the Scientific Committee, Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (2013-2017); and was a Visiting Scholar at the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (USA). His research interests include: meteorology of near-surface wind and renewable energy; climate dynamics; predictability; dynamical systems; stochastic modelling in climate; ocean biogeochemical dynamics; multivariate statistics in climate diagnostics.

Dr. Katya Rhodes is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Administration and a member of the Institute for Integrated Energy Systems at the University of Victoria. She investigates the topics of low-carbon economy transitions and climate policy design using survey tools, energy-economy models, media and content analysis. Prior to joining the academia, Dr. Rhodes worked in the British Columbia (BC) Climate Action Secretariat where she led greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions modelling and economic analyses for the provincial CleanBC plan. Dr. Rhodes' professional experiences also include the development of clean technology and green jobs databases at the Vancouver Economic Commission, analysis of the provincial policy for the Cumulative Effects Framework in the BC Government, the investigation of public and stakeholder perceptions of BC’s carbon tax at the Pembina Institute, and teaching Environmental Economics at Royal Roads University.

Dr. Andrew Rowe, P.Eng, is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Executive Director of the Institute for Integrated Energy Systems (IESVic) at UVic. IESVic’s mission is to chart feasible pathways to sustainable energy systems through the development of new technologies, processes and systems. Dr. Rowe’s current research is in the areas of energy system analysis, magnetocaloric systems, magnet design and optimization, and thermal design. He has worked on a variety of energy technologies, is an inventor on four patents, is an editor for Cryogenics, and a member of the advisory board for the International Conference on Magnetic Refrigeration.

Dr. Brian Starzomski is Director & Associate Professor of Environmental Studies. Broadly trained as a community ecologist and conservation biologist, his research examines biodiversity structure and dynamics, and seeks to link theory and empirical approaches. Recently, much of his work has taken place at treeline and in the alpine zone beyond it, in Labrador, British Columbia, and the southwest Yukon. Other recent projects involve examining facilitation among species in bromeliad food webs in Costa Rica. He works across the taxonomic spectrum, from insects to plants to birds.