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William J. and Elaine F. Hall Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Megan Konar joined the CEE faculty in fall 2013. She holds a Ph.D. (2012) and an M.S. (2009), both in civil and environmental engineering, from Princeton University, an M.Sc. (2005) in Water Science, Policy, and Management from the University of Oxford, and a B.S. in Conservation and Resource Studies (2002) from the University of California at Berkeley.

Dr. Konar's awards and honors include the Princeton Energy and Climate Scholarship from the Princeton Environmental Institute, the Ford Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Pre-doctoral Fellowship from the Association for Women in Science, and the Holly A. Cornell Scholarship from the American Water Works Association. She received the NSF CAREER award and AGU Hydrologic Sciences Section Early Career Award in 2019.

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Assistant Professor and Director, UArizona, Food Studies Degree
Assistant Director, Center for Regional Food Studies

Laurel Bellante, Ph.D., is director of the B.A. in Food Studies and assistant director of the Center for Regional Food Studies (CRFS) at the University of Arizona. She is a human-environment geographer specializing in food justice, global environmental change, sustainable food systems, and agrarian questions in both the United States and Mexico. In her role, Bellante oversees curriculum development and engagement opportunities for the Food Studies degree. She teaches several courses in the area of critical food studies, including “Introduction to Critical Food Studies,” “Food Justice, Ethics, and Activism,” and the senior capstone.

Bellante completed her PhD in Geography and Development and her MA in Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona. She also has a BA in Latin American Studies and Environmental Analysis from Pomona College.

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Research Scholar, ASU, College of Health Solutions

Francesco Acciai, PhD, is a Research Scholar in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University and is part of the ASU Food Policy and Environmental Research Group. His research interests include demography, social inequalities in health, health disparities, population health, childhood obesity, neighborhood processes in health, food access, longitudinal analysis, multilevel analysis, and statistical methods.

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Assistant Professor, UArizona, Agricultural and Resource Economics

Dr. Anna Josephson's core research focuses on individuals and households in around the world, working on risk, development, food security, and agriculture. Much of this research is centered in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Ethiopia, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, as well as Asia, including Bangladesh, India, and the Philippines. In her work, Dr. Josephson explores the relationships between individuals and their risky environments and investigate how households and small firms make decisions to ensure survival under challenging conditions.

Dr. Josephson also study the process of economic research, including instructional pedagogy, ethics in research, and gender in the profession.

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Assistant Professor, ASU, School of Social Transformation 

Aggie J. Yellow Horse is an assistant professor in Asian Pacific American Studies in School of Social Transformation at the Arizona State University. She is trained as a sociologist and demographer, and her research focuses on racial health inequities among racialized and minoritized individuals. She is currently investigating the inequities in health security, with an emphasis on systemic racism as the fundamental cause. She has also written extensively about the impacts of unauthorized legal status on health disparities among racialized immigrant populations. She teaches in the areas of critical demography and health.

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Professor, ASU, College of Health Solutions 

Punam Ohri-Vachaspati, PhD, RD, is a professor of nutrition at the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University, where she leads the ASU Food Environment and Policy research group. Her research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, the United States Department of Agriculture, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and local organizations, examines social determinants of health, specifically in low-income minority communities.  She studies the impact of federal, state, and local policies in shaping environments in school settings and in communities. Her work assesses the influence of access to healthy food and opportunities for physical activity on health outcomes and associated behaviors. She teaches graduate-level courses and mentors students interested in exploring public health approaches for improving healthy food access, eating behaviors, and health outcomes. 

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Professor, UArizona, School of Geography, Development, and Environment

Tom Evans joined SGD faculty in January 2018. His current work investigates the dynamics of human-environment relationships including land use, agricultural decision-making, food security and environmental governance. Previous research focused on deforestation/reforestation, urban ecosystems, and community resilience. Much of his work involves the integration of household-level analysis with environmental data and is draws on extensive fieldwork campaigns. Methodologically his research utilizes techniques from spatial analysis, GIS, remote sensing, econometric analysis and simulation modeling. Research with Dr. Evans' group is multi-disciplinary, collaborative and team-based where graduate students and post-docs work with researchers from economics, biology, environmental science, political science among other disciplines.