Faculty

Professor Miles Silman

Miles Silman is the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation Professor of Conservation Biology and founding director of the Center for Energy Environment and Sustainability. His work centers on understanding biodiversity distribution and the response of forests ecosystems climate and land use changes past and future. Current projects also address Andean and Amazonian carbon cycles and biodiversity controls for use in private- and public-sector ecosystem services projects that change land use by generating revenue for conservation. He has over 20 years of experience in the Andes and Amazon and is a founding member of the Andes Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group. Silman is also a leader in one of Wake Forest’s biggest grants ever — $10 million over three years from USAID and World Wildlife Fund, among others, to mitigate the damage brought on by illegal gold mining in biodiverse-rich Madre de Dios in the Peruvian Amazon. He has taught summers courses in Peru for many years.

Professor Justin Catanoso

Justin Catanoso is professor of journalism and past director of the program at Wake Forest. As a journalist, he has more than 30 years of experience in covering climate change, health care, economic development and travel. He is a Pulitzer Prize nominee and winner of the Science-in-Society Award for his coverage of fraud in the tobacco industry in the early 1990s. His current reporting on the impact of global climate change, from the rain forests of Peru to the savannas of South Africa, is often supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in Washington, D.C., and the Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability at Wake Forest. Recent work has focused on the intersection of faith and environment protection. He is now a regular correspondent for MongaBay.com, a leading environmental news site online with an international following. He has covered three UN climate summits, in Lima, Peru, in 2014, Paris, France, in 2015, Marrakesh, Morocco, in 2016, and a mid-year climate conference in Bonn, Germany in 2016. Catanoso has taught summer courses in Rome from 2014-2016.