EASTON, Pa.(www.lafayette.edu), November 28, 2007 — An interdisciplinary, environmental research project conducted by three Lafayette professors has been featured on the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) web site.
The article, “Understanding How Humans Cause, Respond and Adapt to Change,” highlights 26 grants NSF has awarded through its Human and Social Dynamics Priority Area.
Chris Ruebeck, assistant professor of economics & business, Sharon Jones, associate professor of civil & environmental engineering, and Jeff Pfaffmann, assistant professor of computer science, were recently awarded a $635,000 grant. The three-year award will allow the team to explore how the decisions of policy-makers interact with and affect the life-cycle of products.
An excerpt from the article follows:
Christopher Ruebeck of Lafayette College in Pennsylvania plans to study the environmental impacts of three technologically and economically diverse markets: shipping pallets, cell phone batteries, and water delivery systems. His research team will create a model that combines economic incentives with environmental data, allowing for modeling of more complex systems.
By strengthening environmental analysis as a holistic decision-making tool, this project will improve decision-making in the three resource-intensive industries described above, thereby reducing wood, electronic device, and water waste. The computational models and methods developed will be applicable to many other industries with significant environmental impacts, such as packaging and personal computers.
