Anne R. Kapuscinski is the inaugural Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of Sustainability Science, former Chair of the Environmental Studies Program at Dartmouth College and Chair of the Board of Directors for the Union of Concerned Scientists. Anne is also Editor in Chief of the Sustainability Transitions domain of Elementa, a multidisciplinary open-access, peer reviewed journal. Professor Kapuscinski received her BA in Biology from Swarthmore College in 1976 and MS and PhD degrees in Fisheries from Oregon State University (1980, 1984). Prior to Dartmouth, she was on the faculty of the University of Minnesota (1984-2009) in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, as well as Minnesota Sea Grant Extension Specialist in biotechnology and aquaculture. Her awards include an Honor Award from the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture for environmental protection (1997), a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation (2001), and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Conservation Biology (2008).

Professor Kapuscinski and her students have researched impacts of technology–from dams and hatcheries to aquaculture and genetic engineering–on aquatic biodiversity with an emphasis on fish genetic diversity. Results of this work thrust her into national and international policy arenas on food and environment and marine conservation. These experiences then stimulated Kapuscinski’s pursuit of research on society’s capacity to transition from unsustainable to flourishing interactions with the environment. She has proposed ecological and social criteria for organic aquaculture and led research on participatory scenario learning to address regional sustainability goals. At Dartmouth, she has begun research on integrated food-energy systems and assembled a scientist-practitioner team to study their dynamics, plausible trajectories, and policy context. Her laboratory experiments focus on linkages among tilapia aquaculture and microalgae components of the integrated food-energy system.

Kapuscinski has served as a scientific advisor on the safety of biotechnology to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under three administrations, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the World Health Organization, and the European Union Food Safety Agency. She has advised the Food and Agriculture Organization, the Global Environment Facility, and the state of Minnesota on fish genetic conservation, aquaculture, biotechnology, and environmental planning. She served on the Board of Trustees and chaired the Science Advisory Committee of the WorldFish Center, which conducts research in developing countries. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Kapuscinski is lead editor of a CABI book series, Environmental Risk Assessment of Genetically Modified Organisms and guest editor of an issue of Biological Invasions on genetic biocontrol of invasive fish (in preparation).

Professor Kapuscinski has initiated interdisciplinary programs on environment-society interactions throughout her career. At Dartmouth, she led a team of faculty to establish an undergraduate Sustainability Minor and sits on the Sustainability Steering Committee, co-chairing its working group on culture and learning. She recently began a new role of Co-Editor in Chief of Sustainability Transitions, a domain of the new online journal, Elementa. At Minnesota, she co-founded the Graduate Program in Conservation Biology and an undergraduate Minor in Sustainability Studies. While serving as Associate Director of the MacArthur Program on Global Change, Sustainability and Justice, she co-founded the Institute for Social, Economic and Ecological Sustainability. These efforts fed into formation of the Institute on the Environment, for which she was a Founding Fellow. She also co-led a PhD training program in ecological risk analysis of introduced species and genotypes funded by the National Science Foundation.

Anne enjoys artistic expressions of all kinds, especially live music, theater and indigenous arts. She is definitely a cat person. Her favorite pastimes are sailing, beach walks, hiking, nature photography, reading, making collages, gardening, being with her loving husband and spending time with cherished family and friends around the world.

Environmental Studies Department Faculty Bio: Click here.

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