Matthew Johnston is an Environment and Resources Ph.D. candidate studying energy analysis and policy in the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE). His energy research is advised by Dr. Tracey Holloway and supported by a Roy F. Weston Distinguished Graduate Fellowship. Matt’s dissertation research, building on his M.S. work, is focused on the land-use and air-quality impacts of increased biofuels production and consumption. His master’s research assessed global potential for biodiesel (both volumes and prices) from existing agricultural sources and compared individual country results across economic, energy, and environmental metrics to determine which are most likely to realize their potential. This research, titled "A Global Comparison of National Biodiesel Production Potentials", was recently published in Environmental Science and Technology. Matt’s recent projects include calculating the ecosystem carbon payback time of replacing natural forests with agricultural biofuels in the tropics, and determining the global yield gap for agricultural biofuels crops. Before his Ph.D. studies, Matt received a B.S. in Computer Science (1999) and a M.S. in Land Resources (2006) from UW-Madison and has worked in a variety of industry roles with Intel Corporation and AstroPower, Inc. (now GE Energy).
Sarah Olson is a doctoral student pursuing a joint degree in Population Health Sciences and Land Resources at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment. Her dissertation research aims to understand how infectious disease processes may be linked to the changing ecology of landscapes. She focuses on identifying the linkages between disease epidemiology and environmental factors, such as habitat fragmentation, urban-rural interfaces, climatic effects, ecosystem diversity, and social behaviors. Her thesis will incorporate these effects and look at the impacts of deforestation on the incidence of malaria in the Amazon. Her work is a part of the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA) grant at SAGE and her advisor is Jonathan Patz.