Dr. Melissa Keeley brings international perspectives, scientific expertise, and spatial analysis to bear on questions of urban sustainability. Her research interests include urban environmental management, land-use planning and the environmental services provided by urban vegetation. One key focus for her is the role of science in environmental decision-making; her work contributes a comparative, transatlantic dimension to this conversation. As a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University's Earth Institute, she evaluated how an integrated system of vegetative elements called "green infrastructure" -including parks, street trees, and green roofs-can provide multiple environmental services to cities such as stormwater management, urban heat island amelioration and urban air quality improvements. She has then integrated her findings into scientifically rigorous planning and
policy tools. It is on this topic that she regularly consults governmental agencies such as the EPA and HUD, and advises decision-makers in cities including Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Seattle. She previously worked as a stream restoration ecologist in Philadelphia, and then at the Berlin Environmental Ministry (Germany) and the Ecologic
Institute of International and EU Environmental Policy. Keeley's studies have taken her to the universities of Hamburg (in Germany) and Washington (in Seattle), Ohio State and Harvard; the recipient of a US National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, she completed her doctorate in Environmental Engineering at the Technical University of Berlin.

Dr Nikolay Shiklomanov's main area of research is the response of the Arctic environment to climatic variability and change. He is also interested in Geomorphology, history of Arctic research, and socio-economic problems associated with development in Arctic regions. Dr. Shiklomanov's educational background includes a BS in physics from Leningrad (St. Petersburg) University, Russia, a master's in physical geography from SUNY-Albany, and a Ph.D. in climatology from the University of Delaware. For the last 9 years he held a research associate position at the University of Delaware's Geography Department where he was actively involved in permafrost and climate research. His NSF- and NASA-sponsored projects include both field-based investigations in northern Alaska, Siberia, Mongolia, and China and simulation studies at regional and circumarctic scales. He strongly believes in international collaboration between scientists in all aspect of Arctic research through development of joint projects and of promoting international scientific exchange (including students). Native of St. Petersburg, Russia, Dr Shiklomanov maintains close personal and professional ties with his home country. In the course of his research he has developed productive relationships with scientists from a wide range of Russian research and Educational institutions. Dr Shiklomanov plans to continue and expand his Arctic research at GWU and hopes for broad involvement of GW geography students in his field-based and analytical investigations.