IRES Assoc. Prof. Kai Chan has been granted a Fulbright Award to conduct research at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Chan will spend four months at UCSB, beginning in January 2012, conducting research for a project entitled: “Connecting Human Decisions to Impacts on Ecosystems and Ecosystem Services.” 

As the Fulbright Visiting Research Chair at UCSB, Chan will seek to establish a framework for connecting product designs, to the consequences such choices have for ecosystems and ecosystem services. Chan’s project will utilize his background in countryside biogeography (the study of biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes), and conservation planning and finance, to examine global mapping of impacts on marine ecosystem services, and the connection between Life Cycle Assessment categories and ecological impact research. Chan is the Canada Research Chair in the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at The University of British Columbia. He does research in ecosystem services and biodiversity, and the ecological and evolutionary underpinnings of invasions and infestations; he also has an interest in applied environmental ethics.

See full UBC media release here. See Fulbright media release here.