
A.J. Simon
Senior Science Analyst
Carbon Utilization + Hydrogen
Our scientists will guide your organization to achieve its climate goals with the right carbon management program.
A.J. Simon
Senior Science Analyst
Carbon Utilization + Hydrogen
Alex Dolginow
Senior Science Analyst
Forest Management
Amber Kerr, PhD
Science Advisor
Soil Carbon + Forest Management
Antaeres Antoniuk-Pablant, PhD
Science Advisor
Carbon Utilization + Point Source Capture
Bodie Cabiyo, PhD
Senior Science Analyst
Environmental Science & Policy + Forest Management
Christian Braneon, PhD
Head of Climate Justice
Environmental Science & Policy + Geospatial Analysis
Claudia Herbert, PhD
Science Advisor
Forest Management + Geospatial Analysis
Colin McCormick, PhD
Chief Innovation Officer
Direct Air Capture (DAC) + Carbon Mineralization
Dan Sanchez, PhD
Chief Scientist for Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage
Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) + Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage (BiCRS)
Dave Lee, PhD
Science Advisor
Blue Carbon + Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE)
David Ho, PhD
Science Advisor
Blue Carbon + Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE)
Erica Belmont, PhD
Science Advisor
Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) + Biochar
Greg Dipple, PhD
Science Advisor
Carbon Mineralization + Carbon Utilization
Jacob Bukoski, PhD
Science Advisor
Forest Management
James Burbridge
Senior Carbon Strategist
Carbon Markets
A.J. translates scientific and engineering expertise into actionable strategies for client organizations seeking permanent carbon removal.
A.J. Simon is a mechanical engineer and energy systems expert, whose passion for efficiency and insatiable curiosity has led to a 20+ year career spanning industry, academia and the U.S. Department of Energy.
Prior to joining Carbon Direct, he managed the Energy Group at Lawrence Livermore National Lab where he led assessments of technologies as diverse as carbon capture and removal, the energy-water nexus, nuclear energy, hydrogen fuel, building energy efficiency, and soldier-portable power.
From 2003 to 2008, he helped to manage a large portfolio of university-led clean energy research at Stanford's Global Climate and Energy Project. From 2001 to 2003, he developed combustion and emissions control technologies for General Electric's diesel and gas turbine product lines.
Education
MS, Mechanical Engineering
Stanford University
BS, Mechanical Engineering
Stanford University
Awards
Oppenheimer Science and Energy Fellow (2018)
Department of Energy
Secretary’s Honor Award (2016)
Department of Energy
Scientific Editor for Science & Technology Review (2013)
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Centennial Teaching Assistant (2000)
Stanford University
Alex is an environmental professional with a background in climate change, land use, environmental markets, and modeling. His experience spans science-based research, project management, and strategy.
Prior to joining Carbon Direct, Alex ran his own independent consulting group, Dolginow Consulting, where he advised clients on environmental issues. His projects have included helping to create a greenhouse gas emissions model and advising on philanthropic grantmaking to slow deforestation.
Education
MS, Energy and Resources Group
UC Berkeley
BA
Harvard University
Her role is to objectively evaluate the technical and biological feasibility of land-based carbon sequestration projects.
Dr. Kerr is an agricultural ecologist with a strong interest in undergraduate education. She is currently working as an adjunct faculty member at UC Berkeley during the summer and at Las Positas College in Livermore during the academic year. She teaches classes in basic biology, applied ecology, climate science, and sustainable energy.
Dr. Kerr completed her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group in Fall 2012. Her dissertation focused on agroforestry (growing trees together with crops) as a tool for drought adaptation in southern Africa. Dr. Kerr has several years of field experience in Malawi and Kenya, but has also worked on a variety of research projects in California. Her core topics of expertise are ecology, agriculture, climate, and sustainable development.
Education
PhD, Energy and Resources Group
UC Berkeley
MS, Earth Systems
Stanford University
BS, Earth Systems
Stanford University
Dr. Antoniuk-Pablant is a research scientist focusing on carbon capture and utilization, as well as solar energy harvesting. Her expertise spans organic chemistry, analytical chemistry, chemical engineering, materials science, photochemistry, electrochemistry, and bio-electrochemistry.
Dr. Antoniuk-Pablant received her BS from UC Santa Cruz in Chemistry with a focus on environmental chemistry, and subsequently worked in three analytical chemistry labs at the university. She received her PhD in Organic Chemistry from Arizona State University in 2015, where she designed, synthesized, characterized, and studied organic dyes for research on dye sensitized solar cells. She did her postdoctoral studies at Stanford University where she investigated new methods for converting CO2 to useful chemicals or fuels though developing new platforms for combing electrochemical CO2 reduction and microbial metabolism.
Education
PhD, Organic Chemistry
Arizona State University
BS, Chemistry
University of California, Santa Cruz
He also leads multiple internal efforts focused on principles and guidance to push the market towards high-quality carbon projects.
Dr. Cabiyo uses interdisciplinary approaches to investigate nature-based solutions to climate change. He has recently completed his PhD in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley, where he studied how policy and innovative technology can enable carbon-beneficial forest management. This work bridges industrial ecology, forest economics, and forest ecology.
Dr. Cabiyo's modeling work has focused on the role of innovative wood use in reducing carbon emissions, both in California and East Africa. His applied policy work focuses on improving forest carbon offset protocols. The intent of this work is to promote the more credible translation of carbon dioxide removals to a market context.
Education
PhD, Energy and Resources Group
UC Berkeley
MS, Energy and Resources Group
UC Berkeley
BS
Western Washington University
Awards
Achievement Award
Secretary of Energy
NSF Graduate Research Fellow
Graduate Research Fellowship Program
Presidential Scholar
Huxley School of the Environment
Dr. Braneon leads the integration of climate justice into Carbon Direct’s culture, operations, and services across the carbon management industry.
Dr. Braneon brings a broad range of experience in climate science and civil engineering as well as environmental and climate justice to Carbon Direct. He co-leads the Environmental Justice and Climate Just Cities Network at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, serves as Co-Chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, and sits on the newly formed Center for Climate Solutions’ Advisory Committee, which was established to further New York City’s efforts to respond to the climate crisis.
Prior to joining Carbon Direct, Dr. Braneon served as a climate scientist in the Climate Impacts Group of NASA GISS and as Co-Director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s inaugural Environmental Justice Academy for community leaders.
Education
PhD, Civil Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
MS, Civil Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
BS, Civil Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
BS, Applied Physics
Morehouse College
Awards
Quantification of Historic and Future Changes in Atlantic Coastal Marshes and Implications for Global Modeling
NASA
Robert H. Goddard Award
AXA Award for Climate Science
Climate Action Plan Award
White House
Dr. Herbert received her PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from UC Berkeley. Her doctoral work focused on applications of geospatial analysis and remote sensing in the context of North American fire and forest carbon management. She now focuses on software innovation in the fight against climate change.
Education
PhD, Environmental Science, Policy, and Management
UC Berkeley
BS, Conservation and Resource Studies
UC Berkeley
Awards
Honorable Mention, Earth Observation Dashboard Hackathon
NASA
Department Citation, Environmental Science, Policy, and Management
UC Berkeley
He also supports Carbon Direct’s work in remote sensing, life-cycle analysis, and carbon removal policy analysis.
Dr. Colin McCormick previously served as the Senior Advisor for R&D at the US Department of Energy where he helped oversee the full applied energy research portfolio, and as a Professional Staff Member for the House Science & Technology Committee. Prior to this he conducted research in applied quantum optics and atomic physics at UC Berkeley and NIST. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Science, Technology and International Affairs program, Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
Education
PhD, Physics
UC Berkeley
MA, Physics
UC Berkeley
MA, Astrophysics
Cambridge University
BA, English and Physics
Williams College
Awards
Secretary of Energy Achievement Award
Getting to Neutral report (2021)
Dr. Sanchez is an early developer and leading expert on engineered biomass and bioenergy systems that remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Trained as an engineer and energy systems analyst, Sanchez’s work engages technology developers, policymakers, and corporations to advance sustainable biomass carbon removal and storage.
Dr. Sanchez is on entrepreneurial leave from the University of California-Berkeley, where he is an Assistant Professor of Cooperative Extension in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. Prior to joining the faculty of UC Berkeley, Daniel was a AAAS Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow serving in the Office of Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO).
Education
BSE, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
University of Pennsylvania
MS, Energy and Resources Group
UC Berkeley
PhD, Energy and Resources Group
UC Berkeley
Awards
Secretary of Energy Achievement Award
United States Department of Energy (2021)
Dr. Lee provides technical advice on emerging bio-based carbon removal technologies, either for potential investment opportunities or as sources of carbon offsets.
Dr. Lee is a plant molecular biologist, and has been working with the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E to develop novel technologies in the agricultural and biotechnology fields. These include technologies ranging from enhanced bioenergy crops to sensors and models to accurately quantify GHG fluxes in agricultural environments.
Dr. Lee has experience with agricultural systems in both terrestrial and marine environments, which range from traditional row crops such as corn to macroalgae. He is currently investigating synthetic biology and other interdisciplinary approaches to terrestrial carbon biosequestration (carbon farming).
Education
PhD
UC San Diego
BS
Harvey Mudd College
Blue Carbon + Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE)
David Ho is a Professor of Oceanography in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and an Adjunct Senior Research Scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.
He is a geochemist whose research focuses on air-sea gas exchange in coastal and open oceans environments, the carbon cycle in mangrove and coral reef ecosystems, and the use of tracers to study transport processes in aquatic systems.
Dr. Ho currently serves on the Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry Project’s Ocean-Atmosphere Interaction Committee, and is a member of Ocean Visions’ Expert Team on the Safe Elevation of Alkalinity for the Mitigation of Acidification Through Electrochemistry (SEA MATE) project.
Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) + Biochar
Dr. Belmont is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wyoming. Her research interests include combustion and pyrolysis with an emphasis on tailoring biomass conversion for energy and materials, as well as fire with an emphasis on pollutant formation.
Dr. Belmont received her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas-Austin; and her master’s degree in mechanical engineering and her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, both from Tufts University.
Education
PhD, Mechanical Engineering
University of Texas, Austin
MS, Chemical Engineering
Tufts University
BS, Chemical Engineering
Tufts University
Awards
Career Award
NSF
Dr. Greg Dipple is a Professor of Geological Sciences at the University of British Columbia. He studies the processes of and driving forces for mineral-fluid reactions, including those that modulate long-term climate through chemical weathering.
Dr. Dipple has published extensively on fluid-rock interactions from the deep Earth to its surface. Through field, experimental, and modeling studies, he and his students and postdocs have demonstrated that weathering of alkaline mine wastes are vastly accelerated over background weathering rates and impact the short term carbon cycle. His current work focuses on industrial control of these processes for carbon capture, utilization and storage.
Dr. Dipple has worked at The University of British Columbia since 1992. He has served as a Department Head and Associate Dean, and in administrative roles for the Mineral Deposit Research Unit and the Bradshaw Research Institute for Minerals and Mining.
Education
PhD
Johns Hopkins University
BSc, Geology/ Earth Science
Indiana University, Bloomington
Dr. Bukoski's research broadly focuses on the conservation, management, and restoration of forests globally. Through his research, he has been fortunate enough to work in forests across the globe - including Thailand, Vietnam, Vanuatu, Brazil, California, and New England.
Dr. Bukoski completed his Ph.D. at the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley, and his M.Sc. in Forest Science at Yale University’s School of Forestry. He also holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Bukoski is also currently an Associate Editor at the Journal of Sustainable Forestry.
Education
PhD, Environmental Science, Policy, and Management
University of California, Berkeley
MSc, Forest Science
Yale School of the Environment
BA, Environmental Studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Specifically, he focuses on measuring their emissions to developing strategies to meet various climate commitments to then executing on those through portfolio procurement.
James Burbridge draws on his experience as an energy markets journalist in China and Singapore where he covered the Chinese energy news and Singapore fuel oil markets. In 2015 he moved to North American carbon markets and helped drive the creation and launch of the OPIS Carbon Market Report.
James joined the XPRIZE Foundation in 2019 where he designed and pitched the $100M XPRIZE Carbon Removal sponsored by the Elon Musk Foundation. He also worked on the prize operations team of the $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE.
Education
MBA
Rotterdam School of Management
BA, English
University of Kansas