Sustainable Pacific Rim Cities

Professor Alex Horne was a faculty member at the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley from 1971-2003. He specializes in Ecological Engineering.

Both his undergraduate degree (Biological Chemistry at Bristol, England) and doctorate “Nitrogen and Carbon Fixation in Aquatic Ecosystems” (Dundee, Scotland) were completed in the 1960s and included work in the English Lake District lakes, Antarctic wetlands and the Antarctic Ocean, and finally East African lakes before he took on eutrophication in California lakes and reservoirs.

His Berkeley career was been devoted to determining the effects and control of pollutants on lakes, rivers, estuaries and the open ocean, including most tropic seas. He is proud of his part in the design of over 2,000 acres of beautiful wetlands that combine water treatment, wildlife habitat enhancement, and aesthetics. Some wetlands have received engineering awards and are a part of the drinking water supply for over 2 million people from Southern California to Arizona.

His work first demonstrated a major reversal of eutrophication in a large reservoir by the addition of pure oxygen to the hypolimnion. He has produced 23 Ph.Ds., numerous masters, and over 4,000 students have attended his classes and on-going extension courses.

He has written over 225 publications and the popular undergraduate textbook, Limnology. Hobbies include backpacking in high mountains, gardening, composing and singing lake and wetland songs on the acoustic guitar and his rock/pop band “Mo’ Waters” in which he sings and plays electric guitar.

Professor Slav Hermanowicz is a faculty member at the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and was named a Minner Faculty Fellow for 2012. Minner Fellows teach students the fundamentals of ethical conduct in the field of engineering. They also teach report writing skills, technical communication, public speaking, cost/benefit studies, project leadership, business management, and public service--all in the service of the primary objective of teaching ethical conduct.

His research and teaching areas focus on sustainability metrics; membrane reactors; water reuse; biological activities in aquatic systems; biofilms in environmental engineering; self-organization, complex systems; analysis of full-scale treatment processes; disinfection and disinfection contractors; and nitrogen control and phosphorus removal.

Currently, Professor Slav Hermanowiczis also serves on editorial advisory board of Open Access in Environmental Studies, Versita; and editorial board of Journal of Water Reuse and Desalination, IWA Publishing.

To learn more about Professor Slav Hermanowicz and his research, please go his website at http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~hermanowicz/

Ms. Yang specializes in environmental planning, economic development and international consultancy between the Bay Area and China. She distinguishes herself by eliminating the miscommunication often inherent in cross-cultural business engagements while maintaining focus on substantive issues.

She is the founder of Sustainable Pacific Rim Cities and serves as an executive director of the organization. Prior she served as principal and CEO of ISDPlanning, a Berkeley-based urban planning firm, and a director of International Finance Department of Zhengzhou Trust and Investment Co., a Chinese trust and investment corporation (later the company renamed as Bridge Trust, Co.).

Ms. Yang received her MA in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University, and a MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Georgia Seamans received PhD degree from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at UC Berkeley, a Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a BA from Wesleyan University.

Georgia was a consulting intern on urban forestry issues in the Oakland Mayor's Office. Before her studies, Georgia worked as a community forester with the New Haven Urban Resources Initiative and as an urban forester/arborist with the Boston Parks Department.

Sachiko Kuwahara graduated from Gakushuin University in Tokyo with a Bachelor's degree in Political Science in 1998. After having served as an admninistrative attache at the Embassy of Japan in the Czech Republic and a research assistant at the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA), she joined the City and Regional Planning programme at Cornell University and earned her Master's degree in 2007.

Her special interests lie in enhancing social sustainability of communities through conservation and utilization of local resources, including cultural and natural heritage. Aside from her Master's thesis that dealt with an alternative preservation planning method for Tokyo, she has written articles on sustainable forest management and agricultural heritage systems during her internship at the United Nations University in Tokyo.

Dave Snyder

Dave Snyder is a long-time organizer and advocate for socially justices transportation and land-use policies. He rides his bike for most trips, including when he should probably walk and enjoy the sights and sounds of the sidewalk.

Before SPUR, he served as the director of program development for the Thunderhead Alliance. In that position he researched and promoted best practices in bicycle and pedestrian planning and advocacy, leading workshops for organization leaders around the United States. Prior to that, Snyder served as the chief executive of Transportation for a Livable City, an organization he founded as a spin off from the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, which he served as founding executive director from 1991 to 2002. He received a Bachelor of Arts in politics, magna cum laude, from St. Andrews Presbyterian College.

Currently, Scott Verges serves as the director of a Brazilian iron company (Ferrous Resources LTD), as the general counsel for a largest developer of office and mixed-use real estate project in Northern California (TMG Partners), and an adjunct professor of real estate and business law at Mills College MBA Program.

Prior Mr. Verges was Chairman of the Board of JSM Indochina Ltd, a public traded company listed on AIM index of the London Stock Exchange; president, CEO and Liquidating Trustee of Burnham Pacific Properties (NYSE:BPP); president and director of a development firm (LAV, LLC); associated with the law firm of MBV Law (formerly known as Mandel Buder & Verges). Prior to his association with MBV Law, Mr. Verges was a principal in the law firm of Cassidy & Verges, which he co-founded in 1990.

Since 2004, as executive producers, Mr. Verges has produced five awarded documentary films that captured in vivid detail in health care issues as well as what is means for millions of Americans life. His “The Waiting Room” (2011) won many awards includes Golden Gate Award San Francisco International Film Festival, “Reversion” (2007) was official selection Sundance Film Festival, and “We Are Wisconsin” (2012) was official selection SilverDocs Film Festival and True/False Film Fest.

Mr. Verges received his J.D. in 1980 from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He also authored numerous articles on real estate topics, include “Handling Real Property Sales Transactions” (1989, 1994) and “California Real Property Financing” (1998), which all published by University of California Press.

As director of the United States Commercial Service in San Francisco, Mr. Crawford manages the U.S. Department of Commerce’s international trade facilitation programs in San Francisco. Prior to this position, Mr. Crawford served on temporary assignment as the economic and political officer at the U.S. Consulate in Duesseldorf, Germany. In addition, he served previously as staff to the Secretary of Commerce’s liaison in California working on economic development issues. Mr. Crawford began his career in Silicon Valley, advising firms on national security- and foreign policy-based export controls. Over his fourteen-year career, he has counseled hundreds of US companies on diverse aspects of doing business abroad.

Mr. Crawford earned his BA, magna cum laude, from the University of Southern California, and was an Adenauer Scholar at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, where he undertook research on renewable energy technology transfer. He holds a Masters in International Affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston, Massachusetts. While at Fletcher, he devoted a significant portion of his coursework to natural resource policy, and also completed a graduate seminar on environmental policy at MIT.

A native of San Francisco, Mr. Crawford has traveled extensively internationally. He speaks German, Spanish, and has a strong working knowledge of French.

Dr. Po Lanchih is visiting associate professor at the Institute of International and Area Studies and the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at UC Berkeley. She received her doctorate from the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley in 2001, and then she taught at Peking University in Beijing from 2001 to 2006. Her research interests encompass divergent developmental paths in China's transitional economies, including the influence of Taiwanese direct investment on local institutional change, the globalization of producer services and the formation of China's city-regions, and the socio-economic transformations associated with China's (sub)urbanization process. Representative publications include "Repackaging Globalization: A Case Study of the Advertising Industry in China" in Geoforum, (2006); and "Redefining Rural Collectives in China: Land Conversion and the Emergence of Rural
Shareholding Cooperatives." Urban Studies (2008).

Dr. Po received her Ph.D. degree in Department of City and Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley. Her dissertation advisor was Professor Manuel Castells. She also received her M.A. in Urban Planning at the Graduate Institute of Building and Planning at National Taiwan University.