Professor
Environmental Science & Management

Sangwon Suh

Research

Sangwon Suh's research interests include how materials and energy are extracted from nature, how they are transformed and used, and, finally, how they are discarded back to nature, which forms the metabolic structure of the coupled, human-nature complexity. In addition to making important theoretical and applied contributions in LCA, MFA, I/O and their combinations), he also is contributing to the policy and economics literature. Although he has covered a wide range of resources, several of his most recent contributions have focused on carbon and water, in part due to his growing interest in the issues associated with biofuels.

Biography

He taught "Advanced Life Cycle Assessment" at the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in Carnegie Mellon University from 2004 to 2005. He joined the faculty of College of Natural Resources of the University of Minnesota in 2005. Dr. Suh took his current position at the Bren School of Environmental Science & management in 2010.
Dr. Suh was appointed as one of the 28 members of the International Resources Panel of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) since 2009. He is one of the few members of both working groups by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the World Resources Institute (WRI)/World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) in their efforts of carbon footprint standardization (ISO 14064 and GHG protocol). Dr. Suh also served the council of the International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE) from 2007 to 2010. He is holding Associate Editor posts of Journal of Industrial Ecology and International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. He is elected as the chair of the 2012 Gorden Research Conference on Industrial Ecology. He serves on merit review committees of the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Schweischerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (Swiss National Science Foundation). Dr. Suh regularly provides consultations to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Department of Commerce and UNEP.

Education

PhD: Leiden University (2004)

Lab Websites

IEE Research Areas