ҹɫÊÓƵ faculty offer a range of expertise related to wildfire science and wildfires' impacts on communities, ecosystems and watersheds around the world. Please email the University communications team to schedule an interview with one of the experts below.
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Dean and professor of the School of Public Health
Research centers on environmental and occupational health and its impacts on vulnerable communities. As a public health leader, she focuses on developing solutions for changing ecosystem issues in global health. She also concentrates on the One Health research agenda, developed by the World Health Organization, which examines the interconnected impacts of climate change on human, animal and environmental health, focusing on how shifts in climate patterns affect air pollution and disease transmission.
Interview languages: English and Turkish
Assistant professor of economics
Research touches on key social science questions surrounding wildfire, climate change, and the development of mitigation and adaptation policies. Broader topics include how rules, norms and regulation are agreed upon and influence human behavior in river basins, agricultural communities and airsheds. Leverages disciplinary expertise in environmental and natural resource economics alongside outreach to key management stakeholders to develop cost-effective solutions.
Interview languages: English and German
Undergraduate program director at the School of Public Health
Research focuses on public health emergency preparedness and training. He developed and conducted a local health department preparedness assessment survey, a tool that determines how well health departments are performing on preparedness measures and identifies areas for improvement in future emergency responses.
Interview languages: English
Vice chief of the UNR Med Department of Emergency Medicine; emergency medicine specialist
Dr. David Benaron is a highly experienced emergency medicine specialist with over a decade of practice. He serves as vice chief of the ҹɫÊÓƵ School of Medicine Department of Emergency Medicine and is a physician at Western Emergency Physicians. He is deeply committed to supporting and connecting with marginalized communities through his healthcare provision. Living next to National Forest land, he also has a personal understanding of the profound impact of wildfires. He trained at the UC San Diego Regional Burn Center, where he spent significant time in the Burn Intensive Care Unit (ICU). This specialized training has been invaluable, as in his eight years in Reno, he has treated countless burn and smoke inhalation injuries.
Interview languages: English and Spanish
Associate professor and director of the Whittell Forest & Wildlife Area
Dr. Bisbing is a forester whose research aims to identify proactive steps to ensure forests exist within the landscapes of the future. Her lab leverages forestry experiments to identify forest management practices that promote resistance, resilience and adaptation to climate change and novel disturbance regimes. Her team also explores factors that determine successful regeneration and establishment of forests. As the director of the University’s forest, the Whittell Forest and Wildlife Area, she is additionally responsible for the leadership, programs and administration of the forest and the associated Little Valley Research Station.
Interview languages: English
Professor of limnology, director of the Global Water Center
Research focuses on the conservation of aquatic ecosystems and the betterment of livelihoods through the development of science-based environmental policies. He studies the impact of wildfire smoke on aquatic ecosystems including Lake Tahoe and lakes in California. He has conducted work around the world, including research in Cambodia, Italy, Mongolia and Russia. Since 1997, Chandra has been active in understanding the ecological changes in Lake Tahoe and co-creating management solutions to protect the second-deepest lake in the United States.
Interview languages: English
Associate professor of Geography and Department Chair of the Geography Department in the Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering
Research includes the study of tree rings to reconstruct past climate and the impacts of climate change on trees. He also studies historic land use patterns and finds novel ways to use data from the past to inform adaptation to climate change today by understanding risk, vulnerability and resiliency. His past studies range from climate reconstructions to studies of plant response to drought and tree mortality. Ongoing projects include the response of trees to climatic change as well as reconstructions of large-scale atmospheric patterns and reconstructions of streamflow, lake levels and historic atmospheric pollution to understand fire history in ancient Arctic forests. He primarily works in western North America, the Arctic and sub-Arctic.
Interview languages: English and French
Assistant professor of environmental communication
Research interests include environmental, science, risk and visual communication, including the uses and effects of visuals in the communication of wildfire and climate change and the development of scales for measuring visual literacy in science communication. Her recent research has focused on how people’s actions to protect themselves from wildfire smoke are affected by others and the world around them. She also examined how photographs of wildfire evoked people’s concern for climate change, using photographs of California’s 2018 Camp Fire on Twitter.
Interview languages: English and Mandarin
Assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering
Serves as the principal investigator on wildfire-relevant National Science Foundation and Department of Defense projects and director of the ҹɫÊÓƵ Wildfire Hub. He has expertise in wildfire engineering, wildland and wildland-urban-interface fire simulation, AI-assisted wildfire data analytics, and technology development for fire response and management. He has studied several historic wildfires and works to improve computational and data capabilities for wildfire prediction and risk assessment.
Interview languages: English
Unit leader of Nevada Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research
Research focuses on the population and community ecology of freshwater fishes. He examines how stressors such as climate change, wildfire and invasive species interact to affect freshwater fish population dynamics and aquatic ecosystems.
Interview languages: English
Associate professor of fire & ecosystem ecology
Dr. Hanan leads the Fire and Dryland Ecosystems Lab at the ҹɫÊÓƵ. Her research examines how climate change and land management practices contribute to fire hazard. Equally important, she strives to understand how wildfires influence the ecosystem and watershed processes driving water security. Her research employs a range of tools and techniques, from examining microbial processes in individual soil cores to modeling watersheds and ecoregions. Through this research, she aims to develop cross-scale, integrative approaches for understanding and responding to emerging challenges in fire science.
Interview languages: English
Associate professor of mountain ecohydrology
Research focuses on water’s movement through mountain ecosystems and interactions with vegetation. He studies the impact of wildfires on water supplies as well as the impacts of extreme climates on mountain flooding and drought. He runs the Nevada Mountain Ecohydrology Lab, which tackles grand challenges related to water sustainability in response to unprecedented environmental change and increasing water demand in the 21st century.
Interview languages: English
Associate dean, College of Engineering, and foundation professor of computer science and engineering
Serves as the principal investigator on the statewide , which was funded with a $20 million National Science Foundation grant. The project will increase the capacity of Nevada for wildland fire research, education and workforce development and demonstrate this increased capacity through technology-enhanced fire science in the regionally important sagebrush ecosystem. Harris’ research includes data science, software engineering, computer graphics and virtual reality.
Interview languages: English
Senior project coordinator of workforce development at the Center for the Application of Substance Abuse Technologies
Heather Haslem leads a course for Bureau of Land Management wildland firefighters that encourages mental fitness and prevention and management of stress. During the course, Haslem and her team travel to six districts around Nevada prior to the start of fire season and during the season. The goal is to arm firefighters with tools to improve their nervous system and emotional regulation. Haslem is a Duke University-trained integrative health coach and a National Board-Certified Health & Wellness Coach. She is a qualified mindfulness-based stress reduction teacher and yoga instructor.
Interview languages: English
Dr. Arthur (Tony) Islas
Professor in the Department of Family Medicine, director of the Sports Medicine Fellowship and director of the Wilderness Medicine Fellowship
Arthur (Tony) Islas, M.D., is the founder of the . The fellowship offers a unique opportunity to dive into the world of wilderness medicine. Clinical time is divided between Reno, Nevada, and Great Basin National Park to obtain an expansive understanding of caring for individuals in austere environments. Dr. Islas’s specialties are family medicine, sports medicine and travel medicine. His work takes him around the globe, consulting on medical treatments and evacuations for adventurers.
Interview languages: English
Assistant professor of science education
Research includes an innovative project that enables middle school students in Nevada to engage in various data practices, gaining insights into the impacts of wildfires on their lives and communities. This project, for which Ke received the prestigious NSF CAREER Award, directly impacts 15 middle school teachers and 1,500 middle school students in northwestern Nevada, including those from low socioeconomic backgrounds and underrepresented groups. This research has the potential to transform how young learners understand and interact with data, especially regarding complex societal issues like wildfires. The project will demonstrate how data science can be integrated into K-12 curricula to help students use science and data to address pressing environmental issues.
Interview languages: English
Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering
Dr. Kent started AlertTahoe, a public and private program to bring earthquake early warning and a fire camera network for early detection of ignition to the Tahoe region. Together, this system is designed to provide hardened communications for all hazards through a redundant mesh microwave network. The real-time Axis cameras alert fire personnel at the earliest stages of fire ignition in the Tahoe-Truckee area, throughout Nevada and in southern Idaho.
Interview languages: English
Assistant professor of physics
Research focuses on high-impact weather in the western United States, including fire weather and wildfire plume dynamics (fire-tornadoes, pyrocumulonimbus clouds, etc.), the behavior of wildfires in the wildland/urban interface and tracking of wildfires. He recently worked with a team of researchers to study data from the Lahaina fire in Hawaii to assist emergency responders with decision-making to help reduce major loss of life and property damage during a wildfire. He has commented on wildfire-related topics for national news organizations including the New York Times, the Washington Post and Fox Weather.
Interview languages: English
Forest manager, Whittell Forest
Research focuses on how forest management can be used to replicate and reintroduce historic disturbance regimes of the Sierra Nevada that promote resistance and resilience to natural disturbances under a changing climate, while still meeting the diverse needs of stakeholders and society. This includes managing for timber, wildlife and their habitat, water and air resources, forest health, and aesthetics, in addition to reducing fuels and wildfire risk. As forest manager of Whittell Forest & Wildlife Area, he works to support the forest’s mission as a living laboratory in the Sierras, ensuring it serves as a center for research, education and outreach for both the University community and the public. In doing so, he collaborates with a variety of public, government, tribal and academic stakeholders.
Interview languages: English
Professor of geography
Research focuses on snow hydrology and climate, snow-forest-fire interactions and mountains as social-ecological systems. She has three decades of experience in remote sensing, field measurements and modeling of changing snow and ice. She and her students have published on “at risk” snow, impacts of wildfire on snow, new snow metrics in a warming world, melting snow and glaciers from Greenland to Alaska to the Andes, and new ways of mapping snow and ice from space.
Interview languages: English
Nevada engineering distinguished professor
Research focuses on mass and energy transport through porous media. He studies the mechanics of landslide and debris flows, evaporation from land surfaces, and aspects of plants and microbial activity in soil. He is presently studying interactions between wildfire characteristics and impacts on soil and landscape functioning. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2022 and was a professor of environmental physics at ETH Zurich before joining the ҹɫÊÓƵ in 2023.
Interview languages: English
Nevada state climatologist and professor of climatology
Research focuses on mountain regions that serve as essential water towers that sustain billions of people and critical ecosystems downstream. Perry led the expeditions that installed the highest altitude weather station network in the world on the south side of Mount Everest in Nepal. He has also worked extensively at the highest reaches of the Andes Mountains in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru, where he and his teams have investigated cryosphere changes and associated impacts on water resources. In his current role as Nevada state climatologist, Perry is actively working to enhance and expand observational networks in the western U.S. He has been a volunteer firefighter since 2005.
Interview languages: English and Spanish
Assistant professor of rangeland ecology and management
Research interests include studying the locations, distributions, and patterns of soils and plant communities and utilizing GIS and emerging technologies such as machine learning and remote sensing to assist in the management and restoration of rangelands after a wildfire. He has worked in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah and Washington in environmental consulting projects, specializing in field ecology, restoration and rehabilitation, and spatial analysis.
Interview languages: English
Assistant professor, natural resources state specialist and director of the Living with Fire program
Research focuses on the intersection of land management and forest resilience to fire, drought and climate change. Her work has spanned the western United States and has focused more recently in the Sierra Nevada region of California and Nevada. As the director of the , she guides a team that creates science-based education and outreach resources for homeowners, educators, community groups and firefighting professionals to improve defensible space, ensure homes have proper building materials, manage native and non-native vegetation and prepare for evacuation.
Interview languages: English
Network manager, Nevada Seismological Laboratory
Leads the AlertWildfire camera network, a network of more than 1,000 cameras across the West, set-up to monitor wildfires. He also studies the fundamental nature of seismicity and applies statistical and machine learning methods to interpret earthquake data.
Interview languages: English
Professor and department chair of biostatistics, epidemiology and environmental health
Research examines the population-level health effects of outdoor air pollutant concentrations. Presently, he is leading a study in Reno to estimate the cardiorespiratory health effects of smoke from wildfires. His work has also focused on susceptibility to air pollutants among children, adverse pregnancy outcomes with air pollution mixtures in urban, suburban and rural settings, and the impacts of air pollution exposure measurement error on health association estimates.
Interview languages: English
Associate professor of economics, state specialist - agricultural & resource economics
Research and outreach activities focus on several issues of critical importance for Nevada, including wildland fire, urban and agricultural water use, invasive plant management, public land management, and the role of natural resources in regional economic development. His recent research has focused on understanding homeowners' decisions to mitigate wildfire risk and create defensible space, selecting the right policy to promote defensible space in the wildland-urban interface, and mitigating wildfire risk on private property with spatial dependencies.
Interview languages: English and French
Assistant professor of finance
Research focuses on current issues in real estate, the municipal bond market, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Dr. Wilkoff has a recent working paper with a team of researchers that finds that wildfire smoke increases borrowing costs for healthcare facilities. Prior to joining the University, he previously worked as a financial economist at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and as an associate at Cornerstone Research, an economic litigation consulting firm.
Interview languages: English
Associate professor of computer science and engineering
Serves as the principal investigator on a National Science Foundation-funded project "Protecting Yourself from Wildfire Smoke: Big Data Driven Adaptive Air Quality Prediction Methodologies." His team has developed a labeled wildfire smoke dataset with an open-sourced wildfire smoke detection benchmark, a camera data transportation framework to efficiently transmit camera data in real-time, and agile parallel and distributed data processing methodologies to efficiently process vast amounts of data for real-time prediction. Yang's research focuses on big data, AI/ML, edge intelligence and cyber-physical systems.
Interview languages: English
