Prof. Madhur Anand, School of Environmental Sciences, figures a university with a BetterPlanet Project campaign is the perfect place for her new University Research Chair in Sustainability Science. During her five-year term, she will model interactions between human systems and the environment.

Her chair is supported by the Office of Research and U of G’s director of sustainability.

Anand plans to look especially at mosaic forest-grassland ecosystems based on case studies in southern Brazil and southern India. That project will be supported by the James S. McDonnell Foundation, which funds the development of theoretical and mathematical tools to study complex systems.

She will also launch a new graduate course in sustainability science, to be offered every other year beginning in 2014.

“I especially hope that students from the arts and social sciences will join us, as I think it is necessary to bridge the gap between disciplines for a better planet,” says Anand. A published poet and anthology editor, she is a member of the Association for Literature, Environment and Culture in Canada.

In 2010, she attended a workshop linking mathematics and sustainability. “It was a real eye-opener about the role that science, particularly mathematical modelling, could play in helping to answer some of the biggest problems of humanity, such as scarcity of resources, climate change impacts and even the food crisis.”

Anand held the Canada Research Chairs in Bio-complexity of the Environment and Global Ecological Change for 10 years.

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