Talk:David Lopez-Carr

Semi-protected edit request on 5 March 2018
David Lopez-Carr, Professor of Geography at the University of California at Santa Barbara, directs the Human-Environment Dynamics Lab (HED); is affiliate professor in Global and International Studies and Latin American & Iberian Studies (LAIS); leads the population, health, and environment research group for the Broom Center for Demography; and co-directs the University of California Global Health Institute’s Planetary Health Center of Expertise. López-Carr earned his PhD in Geography at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2002 and a BA in Hispanic Literature with a minor in geology from Bates College. As a graduate student, he was awarded over a dozen grants and fellowships and served as President of the UNC chapter of Alpha Epsilon Lambda, the Graduate and Professional Student National Honor Society for “excellence in scholarship, character, and leadership” where he directed food drives for the needy. From 2002-2004, he was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Biostatistics. He garnered several awards including the Nystrom Award for the most outstanding paper based on a dissertation in the field of Geography and the UNC Post-doctoral Award for Research Excellence. López-Carr joined the UCSB faculty in 2004. He has lived, worked, and traveled extensively in Latin America and in over 70 countries worldwide and speaks six languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Q'eqchi Maya.

Biography
David Lopez-Carr had a rural upbringing in New Hampshire and Maine that spurred an early fascination with nature and geography. He graduated from Orono (Maine High School) and studies abroad for a year in La Palma del Condado, Huelva, Spain. After attending Bates College (1993), and a brief stint as a Legislative Assistant for former US Senate Majority Leader, George Mitchell, Lopez-Carr worked in Ecuador on a Fulbright Grant. Here his focus on the human impact on the environment became more pronounced as a tour guide in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and as a translator to Spanish and to English of Latin American history, poetry (http://geog.ucsb.edu/~carr/DCarr_Publications/peaton_book.pdf), and environmental law. He went on to become a graduate researcher with the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina, where he earned a PhD in Geography (2002) followed by a post-doctoral fellowship in Biostatistics. A three time cancer survivor, he is married to fellow geographer, and LeSorelle (http://www.lesorelleimports.com) co-owner, Dr. Anna Lopez-Carr, with whom he has a 5 year old son, Xé Aurelio. His current research focuses on links among population, health, rural development, agriculture, and marine and forest resource use and conservation. He has ongoing projects in Latin America, Africa, and Asia and has collaborated extensively with conservation and development organizations, including WWF, CI, TNC, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). He was a lead author on the “Land” and ‘’Drivers’’ chapters for the United Nations Environment Program’s (UNEP) Global Environmental Outlook (Geo-5) published as the UN’s position statement for the Rio de Janeiro 2012 World Summit.

Research
López-Carr’s research is targeted to improve human health and wellbeing while sustaining the environment on which people depend. A particular focus is building resiliency among the most vulnerable populations in the developing world. Ongoing collaborative projects in Latin America, Africa, and Asia examining links among population, health, rural development, agriculture, and marine and forest resource use and conservation have led to over 150 scientific publications with support totaling several million dollars from over 50 fellowships, grants, and awards from NASA, NSF, NIH, NOAA, the Mellon and Fulbright Foundations, the UC Counsel of Chancellors, and numerous other sources. In 2013, he was among a handful of geographers or social scientists internationally selected as a Fellow of the Kavli Frontiers of Science - National Academy of Sciences. He became, in 2015, the first to be given a National Institutes of Health Careeer Award (K01) in the area of population-environment dynamics. In 2014, López-Carr was the only UCSB faculty or Geographer internationally elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, recognized for distinguished contributions in the field of geography, particularly for advancing our scientific understanding of the coupled process of human population dynamics and environmental change. In 2017, he received the Research Excellence Award by the Population Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers.

Education
Teaching

He teaches the introductory course to human geography, People, Place, and Environment; upper-level courses, Latin American Geography and Population Geography; a required course for Geography graduate students, Introduction to Geographic Research, which covers geographical history, philosophy, research design, and research ethics. He also teaches seminars that vary annually based on student demand, relating to human population, health, resource use, and environmental change. Based on student evaluations, he is consistently rated among the top handful of instructors in the Geography Department.

Mentoring

López-Carr has served as committee member for over 60 graduate students- 35 as a committee chair or as the SDSU-UCSB Joint Doctoral Program faculty sponsor- and 25 as a committee member across several departments and universities. Ten are currently on track to earn this degree. Measured by publication output and fellowships earned, the HED lab has been among the most successful research groups internationally in the area of human environment relations. All advisees have received external funding, with 68 grants and fellowships and dozens more travel awards earned to date to fund student fieldwork, data analysis, and writing. Especially notable are several Fulbright fellowships, NSF Graduate Research Fellowships, NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Awards, and a handful of NASA Earth System Science Fellowships. López-Carr has also mentored several post-doctoral scholars, visiting faculty, and junior faculty, and nearly a dozen undergraduate interns resulting in dozens of co-authored papers, several of these including undergraduates. In the past 3 years, López-Carr has produced 35 peer-reviewed publications. 30 co-authored with students. Several former students are employed as post-docs or faculty at research universities, including UC-San Diego, UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Miami, and the University of Minnesota. Others have leadership positions for government and non-government agencies in the US and abroad. Named LAIS Outstanding Graduate Mentor among 70 faculty affiliates in 2015 during his tenure as LAIS director, he has since been nominated for the Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award for the UCSB faculty Senate.

Service and Administration
During 2015-16, López-Carr chaired the UC Faculty Senate Committee on Affirmative Action, Equity, and Diversity (UCAAD). In this capacity, he worked to acknowledge contributions to diversity and equity in faculty merit and promotion cases. He championed the addition of “Equity” to the committee’s name, resulting in by-law changes extending the committee’s purview to equity issues broadly conceived across the UC system. He has subsequently been appointed to several UCOP committees where he works to improve policies on sexual harassment, diversity, and equity in higher education across the UCs.

Professional Appointments

 * Professor, Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara
 * Co-director, University of California Global Health Institute Planetary Health Center of Expertise (PHCOE)
 * Adjunct Faculty, Department of Geography, San Diego State University
 * Director: Population and Environment Research Area. Leonard and Gretchan Broom Center for Demography.
 * Affiliate Faculty, Global and International Studies; Interdisciplinary Program in Marine Sciences
 * Associate Investigator, Santa Barbara Channel (SBC) and Moorea Coral Reef (MCR) Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER). 2007–present. LTER.

Selected Awards and Honors
xcellence (2004)
 * Kavli/National Academy of Science Frontiers of Science Fellow (2013)
 * American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow (2014)
 * Shared Nobel Peace Prize VIP honoree (2008)
 * Harold C. Pillsbury Research Award (2007)
 * University of North Carolina Post-doctoral Award for Research E
 * Nystrom Award for best paper based on a dissertation in Geography (2004)
 * Fulbright Fellow to Ecuador (1993–95) and Guatemala (1999-2000)
 * Mellon Senior Thesis Research Fellow (1992-3)