Lab Members

Assistant Professor Benjamin Goldstein

Benjamin is an Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. Prior to that he was an Assistant Professor of Bioresource Engineering at McGill University. He completed his graduate and post-graduate studies at the Technical University of Denmark and the University of Michigan. He develops models to understand the multi-scalar environmental impacts of cities and to explore issues of environmental justice. Research domains include food systems, energy use, and corporate sustainability.

Publications

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Jinchao Song

Jinchao's research focuses on satellite remote sensing and GIS applications in urban environments and resource management. She works on high spatial resolution mapping based on geospatial big data, including functional zones, 3D urban forms, landscape patterns, and building material stocks. Using high-resolution datasets, she investigates traffic congestion, pollutant emissions, and the urban heat island effect, as well as their impacts on public health. 

Currently, her research investigates the influence of urban density, land use patterns, and transportation infrastructure on transportation carbon emissions in U.S. cities. By leveraging high-resolution spatial data, she examines the relationship between urban form and emission levels, aiming to identify sustainable urban planning strategies to reduce the carbon footprint of cities. 

Her scientific interests include integrating remote sensing and GIS for sustainable urban planning, advancing methods for high-resolution spatial data analysis, and exploring the interactions between urban form, resource management, and environmental health. She is particularly focused on understanding how urban design and infrastructure can be optimized to reduce environmental impacts, such as carbon emissions and heat island effects, while promoting overall urban sustainability.

PhD Student - Ali Taghdisian

Ali received his B.S. in Civil Engineering, and his M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering. After graduating, he tested designed novel waste technologies to re-use of saline waste to tackle water scarcity and food security in his home country of Iran . Since then, he has shifted away from conventional engineering solutions towards system analysis of the  underlying social and political drivers of environmental change. He likes to link quantitative and qualitative concepts, and move beyond pure technological silo-based answers to sustainability problems of socio-natures.

He has experiences as an engineer, researcher, and lately as geospatial data scientist. His current focus is on how human society, specifically urban areas, interact with their environment and metabolize socio-ecological flows and co-evolve. Sustainability of urban food system and supply chain are areas that he is currently researching on through urban metabolism lens.

PhD Student - Charlotte Sedlock

Charlotte is a social scientist with a corporate sustainability and supply chain background. Eager to further her research methods and sustainability knowledge, Charlotte is pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan's School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), co-advised by Dr. Joshua Newell and Dr. Benjamin Goldstein within the Urban Sustainability Research Group and the Sustainable Urban Rural-Futures Lab. At SEAS, Charlotte studies how market-based governance may unintentionally perpetuate social inequities in agro-food value chains. More specifically, Charlotte is researching how market-based environmental regulations impact smallholder farmers regarding market participation, shifts, and exclusion.

Charlotte's sustainability journey started during her undergraduate studies in the Honors College at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she double-majored in Environmental Studies and Communication. While attending university, Charlotte joined a mission-driven start-up, Apeel Sciences. Charlotte spent seven years at Apeel helping create the company's Sustainability Team, ESG Strategy,  and Supplier Responsibility Program. During her time in the corporate sector, Charlotte held leadership positions in the Produce Marketing Association's Sustainability Committee and the International Fresh Produce Association's Sustainability Council and participated in the Food Waste and Sustainable Packaging Task Forces.When Charlotte is not at her desk, you can find her paddle boarding, gleaning with the local Food Bank, browsing other people's bookshelves, or fruitlessly trying to tire out her dog Olive.

MSc Student - Sadie MacDonald

Sadie has a joint position in the SURF Lab at U-M and the Ecological Engineering Lab at McGill University. She is studying the carbon footprints of urban organic waste systems across Canada. 

MSc Student - Danielle Levy

Danielle is a master’s student at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability. She received a Bachelors of Science in Journalism from Northwestern University, where she also minored in political science. Prior to returning to school, she spent five+ years producing documentaries and podcasts for CBS News. She is interested in finding solutions to overconsumption and uneven development using systems thinking, industrial ecology and ecological economics. She is currently researching urban symbiosis, or the beneficial material and energy sharing within urban environments.