Appendix B
Biographies of Workshop Planning Committee
Dar Roberts is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where he started in January 1994. He is the UCSB Principal Investigator of the Southern California Wildfire Hazard Center and leads the group in developing wildfire fuels maps and mapping fuel moisture using remote sensing. Dr. Roberts has authored 169 refereed publications, more than 21 books/book chapters, and over 100 abstracts and nonrefereed articles. His research interests include imaging spectrometry, remote sensing of vegetation, spectroscopy (urban and natural cover), land-use/land-cover change mapping with satellite time series, height mapping with LIDAR, fire danger assessment, and, recently, remote sensing of methane. He has worked with hyperspectral data since 1984 and broadband sensors over the same period, as well as Synthetic Aperture Radar. Dr. Roberts also holds an M.A. in applied earth sciences from Stanford University and B.A. degrees in geology and biology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. in geological sciences from the University of Washington in 1991.
Rodman R. Linn is a senior scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). He also serves as subject matter expert for a variety of LANL, U.S. Department of Energy, and Defense Threat Reduction Agency programs concerning wildfire science and connections between wildfire and national security, including those associated with evolving climate conditions. Additionally, he leads research areas of urban fires, wind energy, dispersion, and canopy/atmosphere interaction. Dr. Linn was an associate editor for the International Journal of Wildland Fire from 2005 until 2016 and was an associate director for the California Institute of Hazards Research from 2007 to 2011. Early in his career, he developed a new type of physics-based coupled fire/atmosphere wildfire model utilizing computational fluid dynamics techniques, FIRETEC, which became the first three-dimensional physics-based coupled fire/atmosphere computer model designed to work on landscape-scale fires. Dr. Linn continues to push the forefront of physics-based models for the study of fundamental wildfire behavior, evaluation of prescribed fire tactics, and understanding of complex environmental conditions on fire behavior, risk assessment, and wildfire’s interaction with other
landscape disturbances. He holds M.S. and B.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and New Mexico State University, respectively. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from New Mexico State University in 1997.
Branda L. Nowell is a professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at North Carolina State University and is currently serving as the director of the Doctoral Program in Public Administration. Dr. Nowell’s research focuses on multiorganizational system design and governance, interorganizational relationships, social networks, and community capacity for multiagent collaboration and coordination within complex problem domains. She is the co-founder and director of the Firechasers Research Program which studies the interaction of local, state, and federal systems before and during complex wildfire events with the goal of advancing the science of adaptive capacity toward more disaster resilient communities. Since 2008, this team has worked in collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service and other land agency partners on research aimed to improve interagency coordination and communication during large-scale wildfire events. Dr. Nowell’s research has received awards from the Society for Community Research and Action and the Academy of Management, Public and Nonprofit Division. Her published work appears in a multidisciplinary array of journals. Dr. Nowell holds an M.S. in conflict resolution from Wayne State University and a B.S. in psychology from Boise State University. She received her Ph.D. in organizational/ community psychology from Michigan State University in 2006.
Anupma Prakash is a professor of geophysics at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF). She is the associate dean for UAF’s College of Natural Science and Mathematics (CNSM) and the director for CNSM Division of Research. Her research involves using field methods, remote sensing, and modeling for mapping Earth surface composition and change. Dr. Prakash is the principal investigator of the National Science Foundation–funded Alaska Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (Alaska EPSCoR) Program. She researches changing wildfire regimes in high latitudes by using advanced remote sensing and modeling techniques to characterize and monitor them. Additionally, this research spans to adaptive management practices to mitigate the causes and effects of wildfires at local and regional scales. Dr. Prakash is internationally recognized for her research investigating surface and underground coal mine fires. She holds an M.S. in geology and B.S. degrees in geology, botany, and zoology, all from Lucknow University in India. Dr. Prakash received her Ph.D. in earth sciences from the Indian Institute of Technology at Roorkee in 1996.
Jeffrey N. Rubin is the emergency manager for Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue, Oregon’s largest fire district. His work focuses on hazard and threat analysis, planning, and risk perception and communication. Dr. Rubin serves on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security First Responder Resource Group and the National Institute of Standards and Technology Community Resilience Panel. He was the vice chair of the Governor’s Task Force on Resilience Plan Implementation in Oregon. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, a Certified Emergency Manager, and a Nationally Registered Emergency Medical Technician. He holds an M.A. in geological sciences from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.S. in geology and geophysics from Yale University. He received his Ph.D. in geological sciences from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996.
Monica G. Turner (NAS) is the Eugene P. Odum Professor of Ecology and a Vilas Research Professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research emphasizes causes and consequences of spatial heterogeneity in ecological sys-
tems, focusing primarily on ecosystem and landscape ecology. She has studied fire, vegetation dynamics, nutrient cycling, bark beetle outbreaks, and climate change in Greater Yellowstone for over 25 years, including long-term research on the 1988 Yellowstone fires. She also studies abrupt change in ecological systems, land-water interactions in Wisconsin landscapes, effects of current and past land use in Southern Appalachian forests, and spatial patterns of ecosystem services. She has published nearly 250 scientific papers, authored or edited six books, including Landscape Ecology in Theory and Practice; and is co-editor in chief of Ecosystems. Turner is past-president of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), a recipient of ESA’s Robert H. MacArthur Award, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She earned her B.S. in biology from Fordham University in 1980 and her Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Georgia in 1985.
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