DGE Researcher Profile

Luis E. Fernandez is an ecologist and research associate at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, and the director of the Carnegie Amazon Mercury Ecosystem Project (CAMEP), a multi-institution research initiative that examines the impacts of artisanal gold mining, mercury contamination and deforestation on natural and human ecosystems in the Amazonian region of Madre de Dios, Peru.

Luis' research interests focus on the examination of links between anthropogenic land use change, deforestation, and ecosystem degradation in tropical regions using approaches derived from the fields of landscape ecology, complex systems science and graphical information science (GIScience). Specific methodological interests include the use of Agent-Based Models (ABM) to understand interactions in and between natural and human systems, and the development of new methods for the use of empirical data in agent-based models.

Luis also conducts research on the indirect land use change resulting from the expansion of ethanol biofuel feedstock crops into natural and agro-ecological landscapes in the Cerrado savannah biome of the Center-West region of Brazil.

Previously, Luis held professional positions at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory (environmental scientist), the U.S Environmental Protection Agency's Office of International Affairs in Washington DC (international environmental affairs specialist - Latin America), USEPA's Region 6 office in Dallas, TX (environmental scientist) and the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and Environment (research associate)

Since 2009, Luis has served as a subject expert on renewable energy and biofuels for the U.S. State Department's U.S. Specialist and Speaker Program in Angola, Cape Verde, Columbia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. He is a currently Senior Fellow at the Environmental Leadership Program (ELP) in Washington DC, and was a 2011-2012 Environmental Forum Scholar and Socrates Scholar at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, CO.

Luis has appeared on television, print and radio media in 9 countries, and his research in the Amazon has been profiled in Nature, Scientific American, Smithsonian, Ecoamericas, and the Virginia Quarterly Review (VQR).