RENEW Core Faculty

Dr. Ian M. Bradley is an Assistant Professor of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, and is part of the RENEW Faculty. His research focuses on creating sustainable biological processes to address needs in engineered and natural systems for water and wastewater treatment and resource recovery.

Dr. Crooks is a Professor in the department of Geography and RENEW Faculty. His research interests include Geographical Information Science, Geocomputation, Agent-based modeling, Social Network Analysis, Urban Geography, and Computational Social Science.

Dr. Stuart Evans joined UB in January 2018 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, and as part of the RENEW Faculty. His research focuses on regional climate variability.  In particular, his research is organized around rainfall, land-atmosphere feedbacks, and the effects of atmospheric dust.  

Dr. Trevor Krabbenhoft is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and is part of the RENEW Institute Faculty. His research is focused on how fish respond to environmental change, including climate change, non-native species, contaminants, and overfishing. His central aim is to understand what fish can tell us about aquatic ecosystem health and help us key in on emerging issues. 

Dr. Jun Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He is passionate about understanding and manipulating fundamental physics at materials surface and interfaces for energy and sensing applications.

Dr. Sophie Nowicki is an Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Geology and RENEW Faculty. Her research focusses on the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, their connections to the Earth’s climate system and their impact on sea level. Her work is aligned with the RENEW Climate Change and Socioeconomic Impacts focus areas.

Dr. Kristin Poinar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geology, and a RENEW Faculty member. She focuses her research on the Greenland Ice Sheet: how is it melting, how is the ice flowing into the ocean, and what are the interactions between those processes?  

Dr. Kang Sun is an Assistant Professor of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, and RENEW Faculty member. As an atmospheric scientist, he is interested in using in-situ observations, satellite remote sensing, and numerical modeling of the Earth's atmosphere to understand air pollution and climate change.

Dr. Mark T. Swihart is a UB Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and an Empire Innovation Professor in RENEW. His research interests and activities involve synthesis and applications of inorganic nanomaterials, in alignment with the RENEW focus area in Next-Generation Materials & Technologies for Energy, Environment, & Water Sustainability

Dr. Thomas Thundat is a Professor of Empire Innovation, who is focusing on developing high performance, networked sensor systems for real-time monitoring of chemical and biological analytes. 

Dr. Meng Wang is an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health, with research interests in environmental exposure assessment and epidemiology. In particular, his research focuses on environmental exposure monitoring, air pollution modeling, and health impacts of environmental exposures. 

Dr. Miao Yu is an Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and an Empire Innovation Professor in RENEW with research interest in nanoporous materials for separation and catalysis.