Associate Professor / School Director
Northeastern University College of Arts, Media and Design
Website

Dan Adams is Director and Associate Professor of the School of Architecture at Northeastern University. Dan teaches design studios and seminars, in both the architecture and sustainable urban environments programs, which focus on negotiating architectural design with environmental context, with specific focus on integrating infrastructural systems in cities.

Dan is also the co-founder of Landing Studio. Landing Studio is a design and planning practice that develops tactics for positively integrating global and region scale infrastructure into local urban contexts. Much of the work focuses on developing design tactics as well as spatial and policy frameworks that allow for the interweaving of public engagement and improved environmental performance within typically inaccessible industrial and infrastructural landscape. 

Wildlife Photographer / Assistant Professor of Photography
SUNY/Fashion Institute of Technology
Website

Keith Ellenbogen is a celebrated underwater photographer working at the intersection of art, science and technology to showcase the visual complexity of underwater environments, from coral reefs to coastal rivers to the wild open sea.

Keith is an Assistant Professor of Photography at SUNY/Fashion Institute of Technology; Visiting Artist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sea Grant; Sr. Fellow, International League of Conservation Photographers; Fellow, The Explorers Club; Affiliate Partner, Mission Blue – A Sylvia Earle Alliance; the recipient of TED Residency and a Ernest F. Hollings Ocean Awareness Award. 

John Coley is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University. John and his lab study a host of interrelated questions about the structure of knowledge, reasoning, and conceptual development. How do we organize what we know? How do we use what we know to make guesses about what we don’t know? How do people decide what kind of knowledge is relevant in a particular situation? How does the acquisition of expertise influence how people organize and use knowledge? How do knowledge and reasoning change as children develop? How does growing up in different environments lead to different ways of thinking and reasoning about the world?

John takes an experimental approach to answer these questions by systematically examining overt reasoning behavior in children and adults, as well as the processing that underlies such reasoning. By looking at how people think about rich real-world knowledge domains like plants and animals, food, and people, we strive to characterize the breadth, depth, and flexibility of human cognition.

Postdoctoral Researcher
Yale University
Website

Nicole Betz completed her Ph.D. at Northeastern University under the guidance of Dr. John Coley investigating intuitive barriers to understanding and engaging with global climate change. Of particular focus of her dissertation were identifying consequences–both positive and negative– of consistently concluding that humans are exceptional to other species with respect to a changing climate. Nicole is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University working alongside Dr. Frank Keil and is currently studying the benefits of mechanistic explanations in elementary school science education.

Professor
Northeastern University College of Science / College of Social Science and Humanities
Website

Brian Helmuth is a Professor of Marine and Environmental Sciences, and Public Policy and Urban Affair at Northeastern University. Brian’s research and teaching focus on predicting the likely ecological impacts of climate change on coastal ecosystems, and on the development of products that are scientifically accurate, understandable, and useful by a diverse array of stakeholders. A major goal of this approach is to inform decision-makers with scientifically accurate and useful forecasts. While much of his work has focused on North American rocky intertidal ecosystems, his lab also collaborates with colleagues around the world, including Australia, Brunei; Canada; China; Hong Kong; Iraq; Italy; South Africa; and the U.K.

Brian’s lab frequently collaborates with K-12 teachers and students, and we work to develop cutting edge educational materials with informal educators such as the Museum of Science, Boston.

Managing Partner and Founder, THINK Creative, LLC
Stanford University 

Lisa traveled the globe for decades as a filmmaker and executive at National Geographic, spanning the worlds of television, feature films, giant screen, immersive and specialty cinema, location-based entertainment, finance, business, theatrical distribution, marketing and education. Her award-winning productions have been seen on television, cinema screens, giant screen theaters, and planetariums, in 2D, 3D and 4D.

 Lisa loves harnessing the power of a great story to entertain and drive impact, and did that in giant style within a 60,000 SF venue in Times Square NY, creating “Ocean Odyssey” – a cutting-edge interactive ocean-themed attraction.  With all her projects, Lisa aims to inspire, and especially to reach and support kids, teachers and new conservation storytellers.  Her most recent passion lies in helping to launch Fabien Cousteau’s PROTEUS ™ – the “International Space Station of the Ocean” – splashing down in Curacao in 2026!

Ph.D. Candidate
Northeastern University College of Science

Joan Kim is a Ph.D. student at Northeastern under the guidance of Dr. John Coley in the Conceptual Organization, Reasoning, and Education (CORE) Lab, having graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in Biopsychology and Environmental Studies, Communications Track. Her current research interests include how people learn and think about the environment and environmental issues.