Dan Brabander Associate Professor of Geosciences, Wellesley College
He was a postdoctoral research associate at the Parsons Lab at MIT where he applied geochemistry tools to large-scale environmental engineering challenges around arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh and metal biogeochemical cycling in urban watersheds.
He currently holds an appointment as a visiting scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health where research questions focus on the intersection of environmental health and medical geosciences. At Wellesley, his courses help students develop a toolbox of skills to frame and analyze complex environmental systems. He teaches a core course Environmental, Health, and Sustainability Sciences and upper level courses in Isotope Geology and Environmental Geochemistry. In Fall 2012 Professor Brabander and Olin College of Engineering colleague Professor Rob Martello developed and co-taught a transdisciplinary course Paradigms, Predictions, and Joules: A Historical and Scientific Approach to Energy and the Environment that focused on the "grand challenges" at the interface between energy and the environment through the disciplinary lenses of the history of technology and environmental science. Key components of all these courses is the creation of a research-rich setting where qualitative and quantitative modeling skills are honed through project based learning. In 2010, he was awarded the College’s Pinanski Prize for Excellence in Teaching.
Professor Brabander has published over 20 peer-reviewed scholarly articles with recent work featured in numerous media outlets including NPR, ABC news, the Boston Globe, and Time Magazine. His current research focus is environmental geochemistry, health, and the quantification of lead exposure pathways in the built environment. Applications include fate and transport studies of contaminants in watersheds and urban settings and sustainable urban agriculture.