Staff

Dr. Brett Branco

Executive Director

Brett is a Marine Scientist and Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He is an original member of the Institute’s Executive Council and was appointed Director in 2019. His research focuses on the impacts of urbanization and climate change on estuaries and surrounding communities. Brett holds a Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Connecticut.

Dr. Michael Menser

Associate Director for Public Engagement

Mike has been with the Institute since the beginning and has served as Associate Director of Public Engagement since 2019. He helped lead efforts to robustly design and implement the Institute’s public engagement component to align with community needs and priorities around the Bay. A Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College and past President of the Board of the Participatory Budgeting Project, Mike is dedicated to building sustained civic engagement that supports community resilience and links to economic democracy and participatory governance.

Dr. Jennifer Cherrier

Associate Director for Integrated Water Research

Jennifer is a Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. She is also an Earth Leadership Fellow for Sustainability. Her 27 yrs of research expertise are in aquatic carbon and nitrogen biogeochemistry with a more recent additional focus on integrated water management, stormwater resiliency and nature-based approaches for mitigating urban flooding and offsetting pollutant loading to aquatic systems. Jennifer holds a PhD in Biogeochemical Oceanography from Florida State University.

Sandra Clarke

Executive Administrator

Sandra has been working at Brooklyn College since 2002, first in the Africana Studies Department and then in the Office of the Provost before joining us here at the Science and Resilience Institute in 2015. She manages all operational aspects of the office including scheduling, procurement, personnel, and facilities. Sandra holds a BA in Business Management and Finance and an MA in Psychology from Brooklyn College.

Véronëque Ignace

NYC FloodNet Community Engagement Manager

Véronëque Ignace serves as the NYC FloodNet Community Engagement Manager based at the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay. As a Flatbush, Brooklyn native with a background in public health practice, community-based participatory research, and cultural activism, she develops and leads transdisciplinary community engagement efforts, rooted in social change and seeking to improve community health. Through applied public health practice in diverse space, she has stewarded strategic design and program planning and evaluation to facilitate growth, racial equity policies, an orientation toward socio-political community engagement at non-profits, grassroots groups, and larger arts institutions. She is an alum of Williams College and SUNY Downstate School of Public Health. She is currently a PhD student at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health.

Polly Pierone

NYC FloodNet Project Manager

Polly Pierone is the Project Manager for FloodNet, a collaboration between CUNY, NYU, and NYC agencies. Polly has long been interested in how the built environment reifies social inequities and how climate change is exacerbating this issue. Her past work has included studying disparities in how drought impacts Cape Town residents and processing tree removal data for neighborhoods across Los Angeles, where Polly was raised. She believes all STEM research should incorporate interdisciplinary collaboration, and sees this belief reflected in SRIJB’s mission. Polly holds a B.A. in Physics and Science in Society from Wesleyan University.

Kris Mielenhausen

Project Scientist

Kris is a coastal restoration practitioner, boat captain, environmental justice advocate and educator. At the Institute, his work is centered around nature-based solutions. His primary focus is coordinating and executing a partnership project with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection that aims to use ecosystem services to improve coastal water quality for NYC. The project investigates and quantifies the removal of pathogens and excess nutrients from estuarine waters using salt marsh wetlands and Ribbed mussels. Kris has experience in the aquaculture industry, in fisheries management and as a community based environmental educator and program director. He holds a B.A. in Cultural Studies from Eugene Lang College, The New School and a M.S. in Sustainable Environmental Systems from the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment at the Pratt Institute.

Hannah Eisler Burnett

New York Sea Grant

Hannah Eisler Burnett, PhD is the Jamaica Bay Coastal Resilience Specialist for New York Sea Grant. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Hannah has worked with coastal communities on the front lines of climate change in southeastern Louisiana, Chicago, and New York City. Before joining Sea Grant, Hannah was a postdoctoral scholar at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, working on the citywide flood sensing project FloodNet NYC. Hannah holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Literature from Yale University, and has won awards from the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology and the University of Chicago for work that was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Raised on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, Hannah’s work is inspired by the strength and care embodied by the people there who have built enduring communities of solidarity in the wake of numerous environmental disasters. Hannah brings these experiences to a portfolio of projects that address coastal resilience in the Jamaica Bay watershed.