FACULTY & STAFF
Sara Kuebbing (she/her), Director of Research
Sara is the Director of Research for the Yale Applied Science Synthesis Program. Sara is trained as an ecologist with expertise in conservation biology, invasion biology, plant ecology, community ecology, and ecosystem ecology. She conducts research on how humans can make informed decisions on how to best protect and conserve landscapes, ecosystems, and all the species that lives within them. Sara works with a variety of scientists, land managers, and policymakers to focus research questions and share her results. She is also a member of the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture’s Scientific Leadership Team.
Prior to moving to YSE, Sara was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh where she ran an empirical research lab in plant ecology and invasion biology. Sara’s research training includes postdoctoral positions with the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies and the Smith Conservation Fellows Program, a PhD from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee and a BS from the Department of Entomology & Wildlife Conservation at the University of Delaware. Sara is excited to be the inaugural director of this new program, where we envision to be a space for open collaboration among practitioners, academics, and policymakers to develop applied science that guides sustainable land management. Stay tuned to Sara’s work through her Yale faculty page, Google Scholar and her personal website. To contact Sara, you can email sara.kuebbing@yale.edu.
Mark Bradford (he/him), Faculty Director of YASSP, E.H. Harriman Professor of Soil and Ecosystem Ecology
Mark is the faculty director of YASSP and a member of the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture’s Scientific Leadership Team. Mark is a professor specializing in is soil carbon science. His work focuses on the health, biology, ecology, and carbon storage of forest and agricultural soils. He is increasingly working on applied questions related to quantification of management effects on soil carbon accrual and how that relates to climate mitigation and adaptation. You can learn more about Mark and his efforts by visiting his Yale faculty page, the Bradford Lab website, and Google Scholar. To contact Mark, you can email mark.bradford@yale.edu.
Savannah Gupton (she/her), Program Administrator
Savannah is the Program Administrator for the Yale Applied Synthesis Program. She holds a master’s degree in Conservation Biology from Miami University and a BS in Zoology from North Carolina State University. Her professional background is in applied research in climate change mitigation projects, specifically in air pollution and greenhouse gas and criteria pollutant avoidance projects, environmental public health, and environmental consulting for state and federal agencies. She specializes in grant program management, project management, international projects, and ecological conservation. Her interests include biodiversity, conservation, sustainable land management, animal behavior, carbon markets, and science communication. You can connect with Savannah on her LinkedIn. To contact Savannah, you can email savannah.gupton@yale.edu.
Alex Polussa (he/him), Research Project Scientist
Alex is a microbial and ecosystem scientist focusing on developing methods for the empirical assessment of agricultural practice transitions. At YASSP, he collaborates with interdisciplinary teams to coordinate, implement, and evaluate novel study designs for ecosystem management interventions. He completed his Ph.D. at the School of the Environment, where his research focused on the role of soil microbial communities in carbon cycling across local to regional scales. Keep up with Alex’s research through Google Scholar. To contact Alex, you can email alexander.polussa@yale.edu.
Jimena Terrazas Lozano (she/her), Postgraduate Research Associate 
Jimena graduated from Yale School of the Environment in 2024 with a Master of Environmental Science. Her research focused on carbon pricing and how extending rotation ages in eucalyptus plantations in Mato Grosso, Brazil can increase average carbon storage in these regions. During her time at Yale, Jimena was an active member of YASSP. She co-authored a chapter for the DOE’s Roads to Removal report along with other YSE faculty and graduate students and helped with organizing a workshop on carbon baselines and additionality. Jimena is currently a research fellow at YASSP and has a side job as a verification scientist at SCS Global Services. Stay tuned to Jimena’s work on LinkedIn. To contact Jimena, you can email jimena.terrazaslozano@yale.edu.
STUDENT RESEARCHERS
Megan Ayers (she/her), Graduate Student – PhD
Megan’s research interests include causal inference, machine learning, experimental design, and their use in methodology for environmental policy evaluation. You can read more of her work on Google Scholar.
Kira Biener (they/them), Graduate Student – PhD
Kira studies Ocean Geochemistry in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences under Dr. Matthew Eisaman, focusing on Alkalinity Enhancement for marine carbon dioxide removal. They are also interested in terrestrial climate change solutions in forests. Stay tuned in to Kira’s work through LinkedIn.
Sarah Castle (she/her), Postdoctoral Researcher
Sarah is a postdoctoral associate in the SPIRES lab working on projects related to forest policy assessment and developing new methods for integrating remotely sensed data into causal impact evaluation. Her work broadly focuses on the links between environmental conservation and human developmentand the role of policies in achieving joint social-environmental benefits, particularly in forest and agroforestry systems. As a part of YASSP, Sarah is working to develop recommendations for using Digital Measurement, Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification in voluntary carbon markets. Keep up with Sarah’s work through her website and Google Scholar.
Shivansh Chaturvedi (he/him), Graduate Student – Master
Shivansh is a joint-degree student at YSE and the School of Management pursuing a Master of
Forestry and an MBA. He is keen on helping to drive more investment into natural solutions to climate problems, with a
focus on novel methods in forestry and agriculture that benefit the land and the people that live off it. His other interests include new climate technologies, carbon markets, and renewable energy. You can read more about Shivansh’s background and experience on his LinkedIn.
Caroline Stetson Dibble (she/her), Graduate Student - Master 
Caroline is a joint-degree student at YSE and the School of Management pursuing a Master of Environmental Management and an MBA. She aims to dedicate her career to conservation and leveraging ecosystems to benefit both people and the planet. Caroline is interested in nature-positive investing and nature-based solutions to climate change. Her other interests include integrity issues in the voluntary carbon markets, regenerative agriculture, and impact investing. You can learn more about Caroline by visiting her LinkedIn.
Emily Evans (she/her), Graduate Student – Master
Emily is a Master of Environmental Science student in the Bradford Lab researching the impact of regenerative agriculture on soil health. She is broadly interested in understanding how land management impacts soil microbial ecology, sustainable agriculture as a natural climate solution, and collaborating with farmers to support scaling of these solutions. Stay tuned to Emily’s work via LinkedIn.
Will Gardner (he/him), Graduate Student – Master 
Will is a final-year joint-degree student at the School of Environment and School of Management, pursuing a Master of Forestry and an MBA. His research interests are focused on addressing issues of integrity in the voluntary carbon market. He is currently collaborating with the YASSP team on two projects: one examining how baselines and additionality are assessed across forest carbon crediting protocols, and another exploring how the market approaches and manages uncertainty in integrity drivers. Last summer, Will worked with a U.S.-based forest carbon developer, where he applied his research experience to stress-test their baseline approach and conducted financial modeling to improve landowner enrollment strategies. Before Yale, he led the development of a net-zero plan for a large Asian conglomerate. Will received an undergraduate degree from the University of Edinburgh in Economics and Chinese and is a Chartered Global Management Accountant. Keep up with Will’s efforts via LinkedIn.
Jon Gewirtzman (he/him), Graduate Student – PhD 
Jon is a PhD student with Dr. Peter Raymond and Dr. Mark Bradford. He studies the ecology and biogeochemistry of terrestrial ecosystems, with a focus on forest methane uptake and emissions. You can learn more about his work at website and find his publications on Google scholar.
Thomas Harris, (he/him), Graduate Student – PhD
Thomas is a PhD student with Dr. Mark Ashton. He is broadly interested in modeling forest growth, cover type changes, and carbon storage in working-forest landscapes. You can learn more about Thomas by visiting his LinkedIn.
Reid Lewis (he/him), Graduate Student – PhD 
Reid is a PhD student with Dr. Tim Gregoire. He is broadly interested in how we use sampling and modelling to attempt to quantify forest attributes and is particularly interested in the methods we use to quantify forests to inform climate-oriented stewardship.
Olivia Rhodes (she/her), Graduate Student - Master 
Olivia is a second-year graduate student at YSE pursuing a Master of Environmental Management with a specialization in Climate Change Science and Solutions. Her interests include carbon dioxide removal, climate tech, greenhouse gas accounting, and policy and protocol development, with an emphasis on deployment and scale. You can connect with Olivia via LinkedIn or email at olivia.rhodes@yale.edu.
Karam Sheban (he/him), Graduate Student – PhD
Karam is a PhD student in Mark Bradford’s lab. He studies agroforestry, with a focus on temperate systems. His research primarily examines the ecological dynamics of agroforestry systems, as well as how to use causal inference and study design to accurately attribute changes in agricultural systems to specific management interventions. He is also interested in the social, economic, and policy dimensions of agroforestry, and leads a grant-funded applied research and extension initiative called the Northeast Forest Farmers Coalition, currently housed at the Yale School of the Environment. Connect with Karam’s work via LinkedIn and Google Scholar.
Lisa Sheridan (she/her), Graduate Student – Master
Lisa is pursuing her Master’s in Environmental Management at YSE. Her interests include the REDD+ framework, voluntary carbon markets, nature-based solutions, climate-smart agriculture, and social inclusion in climate finance. Keep up with Lisa through LinkedIn.
Stanley Tan (he/him), Graduate Student – PhD
Stanley Tan joined the Comita Lab in Fall 2024 and is pursuing his PhD at Yale University and the New York Botanical Garden as a Lewis B Cullman Fellow. He is interested in using field experiments and computational genomics to study the interactions between plant communities, plant-pathogens, and insect herbivores in tropical forests. He is also a recipient of the Quad Fellowship 2024. Prior to Yale, he worked at the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat’s Adaptation Division, was a visiting undergraduate researcher at the Yale Applied Science Synthesis Program and obtained his bachelor’s degree in environmental studies from the National University of Singapore. Learn more about Stanley’s work by visiting his GitHub and Google Scholar pages.
Ingrid Thyr (she/her), Graduate Student – Master
Ingrid is a graduate student working towards a Master of Environmental Management in the Yale School of the Environment. She is focused on interdisciplinary approaches to managing human and natural ecosystems and how to use science and data for better policy and practice. You can connect with Ingrid through her LinkedIn.
FORMER AFFILIATED RESEARCHERS
Katherine Ball (she/they), Former Graduate Student Researcher 
Katherine was a graduate student researcher with YASSP and is interested in environmental justice, water filtration, human-environment relationships, nature culture pedagogies, communities of practice, tropical forests, embodied practices, and the arts of living on a damaged planet. Katherine has a Master of Fine Arts in Social Practice from Portland State University and studied at the School of Walls and Space in Copenhagen. Their books include ‘Not Broken Yet: Life in the Mojave Desert’ and ‘Utopia Walks Away: Infrastructure in Copenhagen, Denmark’ and their artwork is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Katherine has been a Fulbright Fellow, German Chancellor Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow See more of Katherine’s work on their website.
Lisa Eash (she/her), Former Postdoctoral Associate
Lisa is now a soil scientist at Point Blue Conservation Science. With YASSP, she studied the impacts of regenerative agricultural practices on ecosystem services. She is passionate about using an interdisciplinary approach and engaging diverse stakeholders to ensure that findings are applicable to land managers and policy makers. Her broad research and professional goal is to identify shifts in agricultural management and policy that support a food system based on healthy soils, climate resiliency, and economic sustainability. You can learn more about Lisa by visiting her LinkedIn.
Cole D. Gross (he/him), Former Postdoctoral Associate
Cole is a soil scientist focusing on carbon cycling in forests, grasslands, and agroecosystems in response to human land-use and management decisions and climate change. Cole led a study on estimating the current carbon stocks in cranberry agroecosystems in collaboration with Ocean Spray Cranberry, Inc and is now an Assistant Professor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
Luca Guadagno (he/him), Former Graduate Student Researcher
Luca is a GIS and Forest Monitoring Analyst for WCS. Prior to joining WCS, Luca worked as a research associate studying forests and ecosystem carbon models at the Yale Applied Science Synthesis Program (YASSP) and stakeholder engagement around forest related issues at The Forests Dialogue (TFD). At TFD, Luca convened multi-stakeholder dialogues on topics related to wood product carbon accounting, forest management, and sustainable land use planning. He holds a Master of Science degree from the Yale School of the Environment.
Vincent Haller (he/him), Former Graduate Student Researcher
Vincent, now a scientist and consultant at Wildlife Works, earned a Master of Environmental Science from YSE focusing his research on forest carbon modelling with remote sensing variables for REDD+ in southern Chile. He is interested in promoting nature-based solutions by designing proper incentives in the public
sector or implementing carbon-financed conservation and restoration projects in the private sector. Vincent has an industrial civil engineering background with a diploma in Environmental Engineering from P. Universidad Católica de Chile. Before coming to YSE, he worked for 3 years as a consultant in EBP Chile, developing projects related to climate change and natural ecosystems with public, private, and multilateral entities. Projects included, for example, greenhouse gas balances for companies, sustainable forest management and restoration initiatives, and feasibility studies for forest carbon projects. He is skilled in quantitative analysis, use of geospatial tools (remote sensing and GIS), and is fluent in Spanish, English, and German. Passionate for outdoor sports and founder of a documentary series called Ecofreeski, which shows environmental problems from the perspective of outdoor sport athletes. Keep up with Vincent on LinkedIn.
Weier Liu (he/him), Former Postdoctoral Associate 
Weier is a Research Scientist at Xianghu Lab in Hangzhou, China. He is interested in the effects of land use management intensity and spatial-temporal scale on the delivery of ecosystem services. He is keen to bridge measurements and experimental studies with management and planning through system-level analysis. His YASSP research was focused on measuring how various forest management practices can affect carbon sequestration on the land and carbon storage in long-lived wood products. You can read more of Weier’s research through his Google Scholar account and keep up with him on LinkedIn.
Laura Toro (she/her), Former Postdoctoral Associate 
Laura is a tropical ecologist and scientist at the Missouri Botanical Garden, who uses basic science to understand how we can implement more cost-effective restoration strategies across the tropics. Her goal is to translate these results into applied science that can be implemented in different contexts. She enjoys working with diverse groups of stakeholders that are interested in conservation and restoration of tropical ecosystems. Her YASSP related research was focused on estimating the extension of commercial tree plantations in Latin America, their carbon storage potential, and other ecosystem services these plantations provide. Learn more about Laura’s work from her personal website and Google Scholar profile.
Darya Wecker (Watnick) (she/her), Former Postgraduate Research Associate
Darya Wecker née Watnick was a Postgraduate Research Associate for the Yale Applied Science Synthesis Program where she addressed quantitative research needs for soil carbon measurement and verification on U.S. croplands. She received her Master of Environmental Management degree with a focus in agriculture & food systems from the Yale School of the Environment in 2021. While at Yale, Darya co-developed the Soil Health Policy: Developing Community-Driven State Soil Health Policy and Programs guidebook as part of the Regenerative Agriculture Initiative. She also chaired the 2021 Yale Food Systems Symposium and coordinated the Ecosystem Management & Conservation specialization and learning community. She is now a Sustainable Agriculture Specialist at the Nature Conservancy. You can connect with her via LinkedIn and her personal website.