Engineering a Liveable Future for Everyone

John Albertson is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. He joined the Cornell faculty in July of 2015, arriving from Duke University, where he was department chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Dr. Albertson did his undergraduate work at SUNY Buffalo and received his B.S. in Civil Engineering with an emphasis in structures in 1985. He then practiced as a professional structural engineer for six years in the electric power industry. During that time, Dr. Albertson earned an MBA (Finance) at the University of Hartford and also earned his Professional Engineer license (CT).

In 1991, Dr. Albertson left industry to return to academia, earning a Master’s in Hydrology from Yale University in 1993 and a Ph.D. in Hydrologic Science at the University of California, Davis in 1996. In 1996 he joined the faculty of the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia. In 2002, Dr. Albertson moved to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University, where he worked until the summer of 2015. He has held visiting appointments at the University of Cork (Ireland), the University of Cagliari (Italy), the University of Padova (Italy), and EURAC (Italy).

Linda Nozick is Professor and Director of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. She is co-founder and a past director of the College Program in Systems Engineering and has been the recipient of several awards, including a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Clinton for “the development of innovative solutions to problems associated with the transportation of hazardous waste.” Dr. Nozick has authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications, many focused on transportation, the movement of hazardous materials, and the modeling of critical infrastructure systems. She has been an associate editor for Naval Research Logistics and a member of the editorial board of Transportation Research Part A. Dr. Nozick has served on two National Academy Committees to advise the U.S. Department of Energy on renewal of their infrastructure. During the 1998-1999 academic year, she was a Visiting Associate Professor in the Operations Research Department at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Dr. Nozick holds a B.S. in Systems Analysis and Engineering from the George Washington University and an MSE and Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Reed received his Bachelors of Science in Geological Engineering from the University of Missouri at Rolla in 1997. He then continued his graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he graduated with his PhD in 2002. Dr. Reed’s first 11 years as a faculty (2002-2013) where at The Pennsylvania State University in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. During his time at Penn State, Dr. Reed garnered a number of honors including the U.S. National Science Foundation’s CAREER award (2007), the ASCE/EWRI Outstanding Achievement Award (2008), and the ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize (2012) for his leadership in advancing multiobjective systems design and decision support.

Since joining Cornell in 2013, Dr. Reed is now the endowed Joseph C. Ford Professor of Engineering in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research group is advancing multiobjective systems engineering, decision analytics for complex systems, and adaptation of water-energy infrastructure systems to better confront deeply uncertain climate change risks and growing human pressures. His research contributions in these areas have garnered more recent major honors, which include being selected as the International Environmental Modelling & Software Society Biennial Medalist and Society Fellow (2016), the American Geophysical Union (AGU)’s Paul A. Witherspoon Lecture Award for Exceptional Mid-Career Research Achievement (2019), the Association for Computing Machinery Gold Medalist for a Human Competitive ‘Humies’ breakthrough discovery (2020), and election as an AGU Fellow (2022).

Dr. Reed is now focused on advancing our ability to navigate the tradeoffs and synergies in confronting climate change, energy transitions, and sustainability development goals. Dr. Reed is seeking to transform our critical water and energy infrastructures and better map the interconnected risks that shape their deeply uncertain dynamics. He is harnessing emerging computational, data, and algorithmic breakthroughs to advance our understanding of complex adaptive human-Earth systems and our candidate pathways to a sustainable future. In support of these goals, Dr. Reed has served as a chapter author on the Complex Systems chapters of the 4th and 5th U.S. National Climate Assessments, as a facilitator in the development of the MultiSector Dynamics Community of Practice, as a member of the congressionally chartered U.S. Department of Energy’s Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee, and his role as an Editor in AGU’s Earth’s Future transdisciplinary Gold Open Access journal.