Author and sustainability advocate Warren Weisman spent two years recreating Thoreau’s Walden experiment in the remote wilderness of Alaska’s Talkeetna River Valley. An American biogas pioneer, he has explained this simple process to university professors, lawmakers and EPA and NASA scientists. He originated a project to have the first biogas-powered transit bus in the United States on the streets of Eugene, Oregon, where he works at a local homeless shelter. Currently he is working on a USAID project to build biogas digesters in Baghdad, Iraq.

Dr. William Klausmeier has been engaged in the evaluation and development of new technology for the production of fuels and chemicals from renewable resources. He has organized and evaluated many ethanol and biofuels projects for the World Bank to the U.S. Agency for International Development. This experience has given him an intimate understanding of the technical and business considerations in bringing renewable technology to market. He has developed and is now commercializing a novel technology for reducing harmful emissions from Diesel engines. Dr. Klausmeier currently consults and teaches chemistry part-time at Lane Community College where he is an advisor of its student-led project turning cafeteria spent cooking oil into biodiesel.

Samantha Chirillo is a 2nd-year M.P.A. and Nonprofit Certificate Candidate in the Deptartment of Planning, Public Policy, and Management at the UO, with an M.S. in Biology. She is a Co-Director of Cascadia’s Ecosystem Advocates (CEA), Executive Committee member of the Many Rivers Group Sierra Club chapter, and an organizer of the Climate Change and Peak Oil Coalition. She was a PROMISE Intern for ODOT’s Sustainability Program and co-wrote a biodiesel policy for Lane County government’s fleet, implemented in 2007. Recently, she completed a collaborative negotiation assessment of Lane County’s forest biomass-to-bioethanol feasibility study and related interests.

Other panelists include Ian Hill and Monica Vaughan.