Interdisciplinary Sustainability Research Professors Join IonE at the University of Minnesota

Together, they represent expertise spanning global land use, food systems, industrial ecology, planetary health, energy data science, and more. The new appointments build on the multifaceted research strengths of the University of Minnesota.

"Solving complex environmental challenges requires breaking down academic silos," says Research and Innovation Office Associate Vice President Kimberly Kirkpatrick. "By bridging disciplines, the new IonE faculty are ideally positioned to transform research into real-world sustainability solutions."

At IonE, research means working with partners to identify challenges and knowledge gaps, bringing together interdisciplinary cross-sector teams, and sharing research with those who can put it to use – supporting decision-making, policy, technologies, and practices. These roles also strengthen the Institute’s ability to serve as a catalyst for sustainability research across the University, connecting expertise across departments and campuses for greater impact.

“The most exciting opportunities in sustainability increasingly emerge where disciplines overlap,” says IonE Executive Director Jessica Hellmann. “The ability to connect rigorous scholarship with real-world application is one of the things that makes these roles especially meaningful.”

Members of the University of Minnesota and IonE’s extended network can connect with IonE research professors and other staff at the upcoming IonE Annual Meeting on September 25, 2026.

Learn more about IonE’s research professors, listed in alphabetical order below.

Dana James, Assistant Research Professor

James will join IonE this fall from the University of British Columbia, where she recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability. A community-engaged environmental social scientist, James focuses her research on food systems and environmental governance.

Relationships are central to her work, which has included research on agroecological transitions in Latin America, the connections between Indigenous biocultural territories and food sovereignty, and working with communities on environmental monitoring and data governance. James says working closely with communities brings different forms of experience and expertise into the research, while keeping it grounded in their needs and goals. “Showing up consistently and moving at the speed of trust” are the keys to respectful research partnerships, she says.

IonE’s focus on interdisciplinary research and impact was part of what drew James to the University of Minnesota. Upon joining IonE, she is particularly interested in connecting with farmers and community organizations to learn more about local priorities for sustainable land use and food systems in the Upper Midwest.

Melissa Kenney, Research Professor of Environmental Decision Support Science

Kenney is an environmental decision support scientist who studies how to improve engagement processes, partnerships, and information tools to advance the use of science in sustainability decision-making. As an expert in interdisciplinary, team-based science approaches, she works on topics including weather and hazards, climate adaptation and mitigation, and water resources management.

Since 2019, Kenney has led IonE’s research and knowledge initiatives team, providing strategic direction for the development of new research efforts and collaborations across the University and with external partners. Her personal portfolio of work includes CIROH at UMN, part of a national consortium advancing water prediction and the impact of public decision support systems, as well as the Regional Resilience Innovation Incubator National Office, which supports the success of a nationwide network of NSF-funded project teams focused on participatory research methods to co-design, test, and evaluate place-based solution pathways. She co-leads the Sustainable Land and Water Resources Research Experience for Undergraduates – known as SLAWR REU – a community-centered and Tribally focused summer research program seeking to advance scientific understanding and support management decisions. Kenney also founded the IonE Postdoctoral Fellowship program, a prestigious interdisciplinary cohort of early-career scholars who engage in impactful sustainability research projects and professional development.

Bringing people together across disciplines, in Kenney’s view, is an important part of advancing sustainability research. Successful interdisciplinary projects often have someone with a “superpower of being able to speak a couple of the disciplinary languages,” she says. “These research professor appointments, along with the new scholars joining IonE, will allow us to do something bigger than any one individual person can do.”

Nathalie Lambrecht, Assistant Research Professor

Lambrecht will join IonE this fall from Stanford University, where she recently completed a planetary health postdoctoral fellowship. Her interdisciplinary food systems research, informed by a background in nutritional epidemiology, connects nutrition and human health with agriculture and climate resilience.

Much of Lambrecht’s work explores how changes to food systems can improve health while reducing environmental impacts. Her recent research involves working with hospitals and schools to understand how the food they purchase and serve can support healthier diets while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Lambrecht also examines how more diverse agricultural systems can help protect children’s nutrition during drought in East Africa.

Lambrecht was drawn to IonE by its focus on research with societal impact and the opportunity to work across disciplines. With a broad scope of work and interests, she hopes to connect with researchers spanning planetary health, food systems, agriculture, and climate. “This seems like a great place to build those collaborations and bridges,” she says.

Deepak Ray, Research Professor in Global Landscapes

Ray’s research focuses on global agriculture. Much of his work involves developing and analyzing comprehensive datasets and translating the results into maps, which serve as foundational tools that help researchers better understand patterns in crop production and land use in relation to climate.

Recently, Ray has been heavily involved in a project mapping U.S. land ownership at the parcel level, covering roughly 157 million parcels across the country. This dataset could help inform high-level conservation planning, including where to establish wildlife refuges or connect protected lands.

Ray also recently concluded multi-year research developing a new global dataset of crop-specific fertilizer application rates, built using 800,000 reported data points with a new imputation model to cover 156 crops over a 43 year period for all countries of the world.

For Ray, who has been with the Institute since 2009, the new appointment means taking on an even greater role in supporting the work of other researchers. “Now, I need to make sure others are given the opportunity to do the work,” he says.

Jennifer Schmitt, Research Professor in Sustainable Food Systems

Schmitt’s research spans sustainable food systems from the environmental impacts of agricultural supply chains to food waste. She co-leads the Food System Supply-Chain Sustainability platform – known as FoodS³ (Foods Cubed) – a sophisticated supply chain model that can give organizations data and insights to inform their agricultural supply chains and environmental impacts.

Schmitt, who has been with IonE since 2011, is currently working to expand the reach of FoodS³. For example, Schmitt is developing a licensing system that would make the platform’s outputs more easily accessible to NGO and private sector partners. At the same time, she’s also broadening her research into regional and local regenerative food systems. Working with organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to local nonprofits, Schmitt sees partnerships as an important part of identifying research needs. “They’re the ones that are doing the work and running into the knowledge gaps,” Schmitt says. “Helping them with these knowledge gaps is where the University can play a role.”

As a research professor, Schmitt hopes to build on her external-facing work while also strengthening connections across the University. She sees the new appointment as a reflection of the partner–engaged research portfolio and network she has built at IonE, while creating more space to build on that work. As those efforts continue to grow within the Institute, she is also looking forward to the next phase in her own scholarship.

Kaihui Song, Assistant Research Professor

Song will join IonE this academic year from Boston University, where she is currently an academic researcher at the Global Development Policy Center, following a postdoctoral fellowship with the Energy and Resources Group at University of California, Berkeley. Song studies energy transition and the infrastructure behind energy and digital systems, including clean-energy supply chains, data centers, and subsea cables.

Song’s research addresses the environmental and social impacts related to these systems, including where resources and energy are used and where emissions occur. She also studies how globalization can shift these impacts to places far from where a product or digital service is ultimately used. “My research seeks to make those hidden connections visible so that we can accelerate clean-technology adoption equitably and better understand the energy demands of an increasingly digital economy,” she says.

At IonE, Song is interested in studying how growing investments in clean energy and digital infrastructure are shaping the Midwest. She is also looking forward to mentoring students and finding new opportunities for collaboration across the University and beyond.

Nathaniel Springer, Associate Research Professor in Economics and Industrial Ecology

Springer combines economics and industrial ecology to better understand sustainability challenges across food and energy systems. He co-leads the FoodS³ platform with Schmitt, using data to better understand the environmental impacts of agricultural supply chains.

Springer is currently working on a major update to FoodS³, incorporating more recent data across the model. The team has recently updated supply chain inputs for soybean data and is continuing similar work to standardize methods across commodities, with an expanded version set to be shared with partners this fall. He says that there has been strong interest in the updated data from external partners, including  industry partners and other researchers, who hope to use it to inform their own work. “Our data continues to be interesting and useful to folks, helping them make better sustainable decisions,” he says.

Springer is also beginning new projects that connect his work across food and energy, including research on the conservation risks of sustainable aviation fuel, which sits at the intersection of energy, agriculture, and supply chain questions, among others. He is excited to continue exploring questions where the two areas overlap.

Having started at IonE in 2017, Springer is looking forward to the new opportunities the research professor appointment may open up within the academic community. He hopes to become more involved in University initiatives and build research partnerships within the broader industrial ecology and data science communities.

Dana Hernandez is the Communications & Editorial Manager at IonE.