Ben is a Master’s Student in Food Science and Human Nutrition with a Food Science Specialization. Born and raised in Denver, Colorado, Ben graduated from Colorado State University in 2017 with a B.S in Fermentation Science and Technology. Since graduating he has worked in the distilled spirits industry as an operator, product developer, and packaging manager for various distilleries in Colorado and as far as Western Australia. He is returning to CSU to assist Dr. Charlene Van Buiten on her research into gliadin sequestration and its potential as a therapy for those with Celiac Disease. In the future, he hopes to work on food product development focused on plant-based and sustainable foods. In his spare time, Ben is an avid mountaineer, skier, and river runner.

Laney is a Ph.D. candidate in the Ecology program at CSU. Laney obtained a BA in Environmental Sustainability and Studies and an MA in Sustainable Communities from Northern Arizona University. Her previous research focused on plant-based school lunch programs throughout the U.S. and how systematic changes can help reduce the barriers to provide plant-based and plant-forward meal options to all school districts. She is very passionate about food systems, sustainability, plant-based lifestyles, and systems change. In her free time, she enjoys being outdoors, hiking, climbing, kayaking, hammocking, and practicing yoga. She also hopes to visit all the national parks one day. Laney hopes to become a professor in the future and help educate people about environmental issues and various solutions.

Francesco is a postdoctoral fellow at Colorado State University. He has his PhD in Environmental Engineering from University of Trento. His work is focused on extending cloud computing platforms with surrogate modeling capabilities, and complex networks for hydrological modeling. He is currently conducting this research at OMSLab. During his free time he enjoys all that the Colorado outdoors have to offer and spending time catching up with his friends.

Shuiqin is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. Her research interests include industrial organization, information economics, and agricultural policies. In particular, she uses econometrics tools such as difference-in-difference and regression discontinuity design to evaluate the causal effect of public policy programs. She has also participated in the design, distribution, and analysis of research surveys. She is working on a choice experiment to design a water nutrient management policy to better serve farmers and agriculture in Colorado. Shuiqin likes to read economics papers, conduct economic analyses, and write research papers. In Shuiqin’s spare time, she likes hiking, mountain biking, playing tennis, and cooking healthy and delicious food.

Javier Antonanzas is a postdoctoral researcher focused on sustainability studies of food and energy production systems. He applies life cycle assessment techniques to understand the carbon footprint of diverse areas such as cereal farming, poultry and dairy industries, natural gas production and transmission systems, and solar energy. He is very passionate about sustainability and tries to transmit this passion to students in the sustainable energy courses that he teaches at CSU. Outside of work, he spends his free time climbing and running in the mountains.

Beth is a PhD candidate in Animal Science – Beef Systems Management where her research has focused on mitigating financial stress for beef operators in Colorado using benchmarking tactics and Systems Dynamics methodology that investigate various drought strategies. Beth obtained an MS in Animal Science – Breeding and Genetics at Colorado State University while working at the USDA-National Animal Germplasm Program. She is very passionate about the beef industry and the people working in it – a reflection of her upbringing on a registered Angus and commercial cattle operation in Kansas. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her husband and toddler, and visiting the farm back home when time allows.

Becca is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at CSU. She also got her M.A. at CSU in Sociology. During her undergraduate degree, Becca worked at a non-profit farm in Seattle, WA that partnered with the county to provide horticulture training as an alternative to incarceration. Following this experience, Becca’s work has focused on food systems and carceral systems, as well as discourse and social movements. Through these foci, she has studied migrant farmworker labor organizing and hunger strikes in immigrant detention. Currently she is a part of a research lab conducting a nation-wide study on horticulture and agriculture programs in prisons. She is also collaborating with Dr. Josh Sbicca in the Department of Sociology on a study of news coverage of hunger strikes in prisons.

Following his Master’s in Development Economics and work experience in rural agricultural development in India, Pratyoosh is motivated to work towards small-farm and rural agricultural development, supporting policies and programs, and in understanding the regional economics of the same. His Ph.D. work will focus on the impact of Farm to School legislation on farmers, supply chain businesses, rural communities, and the economics of the policy changes. Prior to starting his Ph.D. at CSU, Pratyoosh focused on the development of community-based livestock farming and marketing with small, marginal, and landless women farmers in India, agricultural extension, and value chain development. He is looking to substantiate his learning from a developing country context with a developed country context in rural development. In Pratyoosh’s free time he is also a photographer and he feels that visuals can strongly complement research findings.

Carrie is a postdoctoral fellow and School of Global Environmental Sustainability (SoGES) Sustainability Leadership Fellow working with Dr. Joshua Sbicca in the Department of Sociology and Dr. Melissa McHale in the Department of Ecosystem Science & Sustainability. Carrie has her PhD in Sustainable Agriculture from Iowa State University, where she worked as a graduate researcher with ISU Extension’s Local Foods and SNAP-Education programs. In her research, Carrie is passionate about issues of food justice, anti-racism, and community engagement. Her postdoctoral food systems research includes a nationwide study of food and agriculture programs in US state prisons.

Mackenzie Gill’s primary research focuses are in agricultural marketing and consumer choice. At the University of Tennessee, her M.S. thesis investigated consumer preferences for eco-friendly attributes in single-use disposables. Going forward, she is interested in exploring the intersection of consumer choice and regional food system growth. Her long-term career objective is to investigate economic opportunities from which struggling communities and firms in developing industries can benefit. She’s so grateful to be a part of the CSU Food Systems team!

Lindsey is a postdoc with Nathan Mueller at Colorado State University. Lindsey has her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Arizona. Her post-graduate work has focused primarily on climate impacts to global agriculture. She is interested in understanding how increasing temperatures and changing precipitation regimes impact both crop and grazing systems. Her work examines climate trends and large-scale geographic patterns in agriculture, leveraging agricultural census data, climate and soil records, hydrological modeling output, and new remote sensing data. Some of her current interests include climate adaptation through crop migration, the use of remotely sensed Solar Induced Fluorescence in crop productivity forecasting, and how changes in snowmelt runoff have impacted crop irrigation.

Food and agriculture systems have been my primary point of interest along each step of my professional path. After completing my degree in plant genetics at Purdue University, I explored a different side of food and agriculture while working at a food access nonprofit in the D.C. metro area, supporting community kitchen and farmers market programming. I am excited to be continuing my exploration at CSU, and contributing to a growing body of knowledge that strengthens food systems. In my spare time I enjoy music, cooking, spending time in the company of friends and family, and enjoying all there is to do in Colorado.

India Luxton is currently a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Colorado State University. India graduated from Western New England University in 2015 with her bachelor’s degree in Sociology. She received her Master’s degree from Colorado State University in 2017. Broadly, India is interested in community-based research with an emphasis on social change, the environment, and industrialized animal agriculture. India’s dissertation will examine COVID-19’s impact on industrialized animal agriculture, with a focus on emergent policies, regulatory decisions, and outcomes. India’s published works include “Collaborative Concession in Food Movement Networks: The Uneven Relations of Resource Mobilization,” an article that examines how organizations navigate differences in power and influence through resource exchange, and “Mapping Movements: A Call for Qualitative Social Network Analysis,” a methodological article that highlights the advantages of qualitative social network analysis in food system and social movement research.

Currently, Hailey is researching worker perspectives in livestock operations in order to better working environments, training methods, and animal welfare. While she doesn’t have a farming background, she received her bachelor’s degree in Animal Science from Iowa State University, where she engaged in community agriculture outreach and worked at 4-H events in the area. Previously, Hailey spent time teaching children about livestock handling and animal agriculture systems across the US. At CSU she is assisting on a variety of projects in the Department of Animal Sciences, ranging from equine behavior to animal handling. She is very excited to reach out to communities to help them grow fresh produce and raise livestock in order to attain a nutritious and balanced food supply.

Erin loves being part of the CSU food systems team! Her interest in food systems and agriculture began in college when she worked on a ranch in Arkansas for a summer. She continued to learn about various food systems after college, living on a small fishing island in Maine for two years and studying seaweed aquaculture as an income diversification strategy for lobstermen. Then she worked for the YMCA Nutrition Department running their after-school and summer meal programs in the mountains of western North Carolina before moving to Fort Collins. Her research interests include food systems as a mechanism for economic development, particularly in rural areas, supply chains, and, of course, potatoes! In her free time, Erin enjoys cooking adventurously, going to bluegrass shows, brewing beer, playing frisbee, snuggling her (very unimpressed) cat, and hiking and running the local trails.

Azmal’s research interest is the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus and its climate change implications. As a national research trainee of InTERFEWS at CSU, he is particularly interested in how climate change affects food security amidst the growing scarcity of irrigation water in the Global South. His interest in food security comes from his MA thesis where he examined how the underlying connections between climate change and household characteristics influence women’s nutritional status in Bangladesh. Currently Azmal is engaged with different multidisciplinary research groups covering food justice in the US prison system, implications of the Good Food Purchasing Program (GFPP) for Colorado’s food system, the COVID-19 pandemic and food security, climate change resilience of indigenous, rural and vulnerable communities in the South-central region of the USA, and climate gentrification and socio-environmental justice.

Chelsea has a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from UC San Diego and a Master’s degree in Biology from Seoul National University. She is adopting a translational, interdisciplinary approach for her PhD research on beans, using laboratory work to answer key questions that will inform the development of outreach materials. She thinks it is critical to integrate dissemination into research plans, and she is preparing for a career with Extension. Chelsea also helps coordinate the Food Systems webinars.

As a Masters of Political Science candidate, Eddie’s thesis tracks the coevolution of agri-food (large and small scale) with the diets, health, and overall lifestyles of not just consumers, but individuals in the production of food also. By focusing on the historic, political economy of food industries, insight into its relationship with our broader society can be drawn. He received a bachelor’s degree in history and in political science from Colorado State University in 2017 and is a Colorado native.

Regan’s research interests lie in the broad scope of sustainable agriculture and food systems. Within this area, she enjoys studying local and organic markets, consumer behavior, food access and security, and sustainable consumption and production. As an undergraduate, she researched the U.S. market implications of a CO2-equivalent tax on meat consumption and statistically analyzed producer adoption of conservation practices in conventional Nebraska and Iowa agriculture. Regan also served as president of UNL’s Student Organic Farm and has worked with Nebraska Extension and local farms. She’s thrilled to be a part of this team working to improve our food systems for all.

Hailey Summers  is a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering and her research is focused on quantifying the sustainability of agriculture, bio-processing and food-related systems through life cycle and techno-economic assessments. She is interested in understanding environmental and economic trade-offs within individual systems, as well as improving the process efficiency of existing product pathways and supply chains