Executive Staff
Bruce Tonn
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Erin Rose
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Beth Hawkins
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Dr. Bruce Tonn, Co-Founder and President. Three themes run through his research and interests:
• Rigorous evaluation of low-income energy and other programs that promote equitable sustainable futures.
• Convergence of science and technology on sustainable designs for community-based, energy, industrial, and other
systems.
• Very long-term perspectives of sustainability with explicit concern for the well-being of future generations.
These three themes are illustrated in recently published papers and reports on: the health benefits of low-income weatherization; obligations to future generations with respect to existential risks; and, a design for a sustainable suburban subdivision called Willow Pond. All told, Dr. Tonn has authored/co-authored over 300 publications. He is an Associate Editor for the journal Futures and is on the editorial board of Sustainability. Dr. Tonn received a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Stanford University, a Masters in City and Regional Planning from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from Northwestern University. He previously held positions at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Recent notable projects and professional activities include:
• Principal Investigator -- Estimating the health and resilience benefits of improving the energy efficiency of affordable
multifamily buildings, funded by The JPB Foundation
• Principal Investigator -- Estimating the health and household benefits of weatherizing low-income homes in Knoxville,
funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
• Project Lead -- East Tennessee Opioid Epidemic Foresight Process, funded by the East Tennessee Foundation
• Principal Investigator -- Retrospective and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act period evaluations of the Department
of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program.
• Co-chair -- National Science Foundation study panel on Societal Benefits and Implications of Converging Knowledge and
Technology.
• Rigorous evaluation of low-income energy and other programs that promote equitable sustainable futures.
• Convergence of science and technology on sustainable designs for community-based, energy, industrial, and other
systems.
• Very long-term perspectives of sustainability with explicit concern for the well-being of future generations.
These three themes are illustrated in recently published papers and reports on: the health benefits of low-income weatherization; obligations to future generations with respect to existential risks; and, a design for a sustainable suburban subdivision called Willow Pond. All told, Dr. Tonn has authored/co-authored over 300 publications. He is an Associate Editor for the journal Futures and is on the editorial board of Sustainability. Dr. Tonn received a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Stanford University, a Masters in City and Regional Planning from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from Northwestern University. He previously held positions at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Recent notable projects and professional activities include:
• Principal Investigator -- Estimating the health and resilience benefits of improving the energy efficiency of affordable
multifamily buildings, funded by The JPB Foundation
• Principal Investigator -- Estimating the health and household benefits of weatherizing low-income homes in Knoxville,
funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
• Project Lead -- East Tennessee Opioid Epidemic Foresight Process, funded by the East Tennessee Foundation
• Principal Investigator -- Retrospective and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act period evaluations of the Department
of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program.
• Co-chair -- National Science Foundation study panel on Societal Benefits and Implications of Converging Knowledge and
Technology.
Erin Rose, Co-Founder and Vice-President of Social Equity, received her Master of Science in Social Work with a concentration in macro-scaled social work in the areas of environmental policy and justice, community organizing, and administration. Her current work involves the design and implementation of studies targeting energy program impacts on households of low-socioeconomic status. Ms. Rose was project lead for the design and implementation of multiple studies under the national evaluation of the Department of Energy's Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) including the development of a survey instrument administered to occupants in efforts to characterize the WAP eligible population and to evaluate the Program's impact on dwelling characteristics and quality, health, affordability, and satisfaction. Ms. Rose also managed a social network study exploring the impacts of communication of WAP recipients' experiences with weatherization on program utilization, household energy consuming behavior and investment in energy-efficiency measures. She also managed a study with Washington State Institutional Review Board approval for the collection of Medicaid records in efforts to measure changes in asthma treatment related costs for children in homes that received Weatherization Plus Health measures. Her background provides the skills necessary to study social justice issues related to household level fuel poverty, access to resources, the impact on home energy-efficiency programs on Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) and health, climate change and other areas of environmental impacts on persons of vulnerable status.
Beth Hawkins, Co-Founder and Vice-President of Research Development, received her Master of Science in Landscape Architecture with a concentration in Environmental Planning and Design; her undergraduate degree is in Cultural Anthropology. Between her tenure at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and, currently, with Three3, Ms. Hawkins has seven years experience working in the research field as a social scientist. Her work has primarily been focused on program evaluation through the measurement of impacts and outcomes, systems analysis, case studies, participatory planning processes and community engagement, identification of key actors and social network analyses, and workshop design and facilitation. Most recently she managed an effort to evaluate and assess local placemaking initiatives focusing on the connection between built environment, public health and resiliency. Currently she is co-managing a regional evaluation of the health and resilience benefits of improving the energy-efficiency of affordable multifamily housing--leading the monetization effort for reduced incidences of medical care and deaths due to thermal stress, and the assessment of the building systems resilience benefits of energy-efficiency retrofits. This project builds upon the research she conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory while co-managing the national evaluation of the U.S. Department of Energy’s low-income Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP), and the associated energy and non-energy health- and household-related impacts.
Research Staff
Michaela Marincic graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.A. in English from a small liberal arts college in 2016. At St. Olaf College, Marincic also studied Environmental Science and Sustainable Development, Economics, and Computer Science. Two deep-seated fascinations drive her intellectual work: human beings and efficiency. Sustainability merges these fields to find how humans can live and organize societies efficiently to reduce waste and emissions. In 2016, Marincic led research at the intersection of environmental psychology and literature that found subjects who read haiku with nature imagery experienced a reduction in negative affect (e.g. anger, nervousness) while subjects who read haiku with non-nature imagery experienced no statistically significant effect on either affect. The findings further support the theory that certain forms of exposure to nature can improve human well-being. Marincic also contributed to research on health benefits resulting from low-income residential weatherization in Knoxville, TN in 2017. For Marincic, energy efficiency and sustainable, healthy living continue to motivate further research and information dissemination.