ACADEMIC DIRECTOR & MANAGER
Kelleen Wiseman
Kelleen Wiseman is the Academic Director of the Master of Food and Resource Economics (MFRE) program at The University of British Columbia. Her research and teaching focuses on sustainable entrepreneurship, green financing, and sustainable reporting in the climate, food, and agri‐business sector. In addition, Dr. Wiseman has cross‐cutting industry experience in the agri‐food production/processing sector, banking, and marketing sectors in Canada and the United States. She has recently launched a UBC Micro‐Certificate in Environmental Metrics for Sustainability Reporting that aims to train working professionals in the design of environmental metrics to track the impact of an organization’s activity and sustainability management practices
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Professor
Rick Barichello
Rick grew up on a dairy farm in the Fraser Valley near Vancouver, after which he completed his B.Sc. (Agr) at the University of British Columbia and his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Chicago. He has taught at UBC since then, but has also worked for the Harvard Institute for International Development in Indonesia from 1986 to 1988, and has worked in most Southeast Asian countries since that time. His research interests include agricultural and trade policy, regulated markets, dairy industry economics, quota markets, international development, and rural labour markets. He teaches courses in Food Market Analysis and Policy Analysis in the MFRE program.
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Professor
Jim Vercammen
Jim began his faculty position at UBC in 1991, after completing a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Agricultural Economics at the University of Saskatchewan, and a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Berkeley. His teaching and research interests include commodity prices, partially stemming from his own experience selling agricultural commodities while previously farming in Saskatchewan. Jim has held a number of volunteer academic positions outside of UBC including president of the Canadian Agricultural Economics Association and co-editors for both the Canadian and American Journals of Agricultural Economics. Jim’s 2011 textbook, Agricultural Marketing: Structural Models for Price Analysis continues to be used in both domestic and international agricultural economics graduate programs.
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Professor
Sumeet Gulati
Sumeet completed his Ph.D. in agricultural and resource economics at the University of Maryland in College Park, USA, in 2003, and has since been at Food and Resource Economics at UBC. In his research, Sumeet focuses on questions related to the formation and effectiveness of environmental policies, for example, should our government subsidize hybrid electric vehicles, what are the benefits of paying people to scrap their old cars? Sumeet teaches Environmental Economics and Policy in the MFRE program.
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Professor
Carol McAusland
Carol is an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, and Canada Research Chair in Trade and Environment. Carol did her M.A. and Ph.D in Economics at the University of Michigan and has taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara and University of Maryland. She has been teaching at Food and Resource Economics, UBC since 2009. Her research interests include environmental policy, regulated markets, carbon footprints, globalization, and international trade. She teaches an undergraduate course in Economics of Food Consumption Policy and will be teaching a module in Environmental Economics in the MFRE Program in Term 2, 2017.
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Assistant Professor
Frederik Noack
Frederik is assistant professor at the Food and Resource Economics Group at UBC. His research focuses on the interaction of economic development and the environment. In particular, he is interested in the impacts of improved market access and property rights on land use and natural resources such as fish stocks, forests and biodiversity. He uses mathematical models to guide my empirical analysis and to derive testable predictions. He often collaborates with environmental scientists to better understand and quantify the environmental impacts of economic development.
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Assistant Professor
Matias Margulis
Matias is Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia. His research and teaching interests are in global governance, development, human rights, international law and food policy. He has previously held academic positions at the University of Edinburgh, University of Stirling, University of Northern British Columbia and Max Plank Institute for the Study of Societies. In 2010-2011, he was the Cadieux-Léger Fellow at Global Affairs Canada.
In addition to his academic research, Matias has extensive professional experience in the field of international policymaking and is a former Canadian representative to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). He has also advised the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and the Scottish Parliament and consulted for international NGOs and the Brookings Institution
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MFRE Associates, Adjunct, and Lecturers
Professor
Rashid Sumaila
Professor Sumaila was recently appointed a University Killam Professor, the highest honour UBC can confer on a faculty member. His research focuses on the well-being and sustainability of coastal communities and ecosystems. He is a Canada Research Chair (Tier I) in Interdisciplinary Ocean and Fisheries Economics and specializes in bio-economics, marine ecosystem evaluation, and the analysis of global issues such as fisheries subsidies, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, and the economics of high and deep seas fisheries. Professor Sumaila is a Volvo Environment Prize winner and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
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Professor Emeritus
Gordon R Munro
Gordon is a Professor Emeritus in the Vancouver School of Economics and an Associate of the Institute for Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia. His main research interest is in the economics management of world fishery resources, which has led him to do work for the FAO of the UN, the OECD and the World Bank.
Professor Munro research has contributed significantly to the understanding of the implications of the extension of economic zones to 200 miles in the 1970s with a series of papers published by the Law of the Sea Institute. More recently, his work has pushed the issue of subsidies in fisheries to the forefront. In addition research on shared fish stock management issues has occupied Professor Munro right up until the present day.
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Adjunct Professor
Karen Taylor
Dr. Karen Taylor teaches Agribusiness Management, Food Policy, and economics in graduate and undergraduate courses in the Land & Food Systems department at the University of British Columbia. She has twenty years of corporate banking experience in the agriculture and food sector, retiring a couple of months ago from BMO where she was the Director of Corporate Finance for Agriculture Markets in BC. She also has a consulting company where she conducts research and provides agriculture expertise to government, industry stakeholders, and various agribusinesses. She has a bachelor’s degree in business economics from the University of Saskatchewan, an MBA in Agribusiness and Economics from the University of Guelph, and a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Oklahoma State University. Karen has strong ties to the BC agribusiness sector and is an active member of the BC Institute of Agrologists.
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Associate Professor
Tim Silk
Tim is an Associate Professor in the Marketing and Behavioral Sciences Division at the UBC Sauder School of Business. Tim teaches the Survey Design & Analysis course in the MFRE program and works with organizations to identify market opportunities and bring new products to market. He is an award-winning teacher and researcher and has served as an advisor on consumer behavior, brand strategy, disruptive innovation, product development, and pricing to organizations such as Brand Finance, L’Oréal, McKesson, Miller Brewing, and Visa.
Tim is a strong advocate of using consumer behavior research to inform public policy and has advised on policy formation at government organizations including the Competition Bureau of Canada, U.S. Federal Trade Commission, U.S. Department of Energy and the Chinese Academy of Sciences
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Adjunct Professor
Kurt Niquidet
Kurt Niquidet joined COFI as Vice President and Chief Economist in May 2019. He also is currently an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Forestry at UBC. Kurt was born in Williams Lake, British Columbia. He holds a bachelor’s degree in forestry from UBC, a master’s degree in economics from the University of Victoria, and a Ph.D. from the University of Groningen. Prior to COFI, Kurt was at the Bank of Canada in Ottawa, where he was a Director within the International Economic Analysis Department responsible for global commodities and emerging markets. Kurt also spent several years as part of the Canadian Forest Service, leading a team of research economists, and lectured in Forest Economics at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He started his career as a forester for Makah Tribal Council in Washington state and has consulted with forestry-related private and public organizations in B.C.
Kurt has published economic papers on several topics ranging from bio-energy, forest tenure reform, timber auctions, and international trade. Kurt joined the MFRE program as an adjunct professor where he teaches Applied Econometrics with Time Series Data.
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Sessional Instructor
Nishant Kalia
Nishant has extensive industry experience in Commodity Derivatives Trading, Strategic Sourcing, and Contract Negotiation. Nishant is currently employed as an Associate Director of Procurement Partnerships at UBC. He holds a B.Eng (Punjab Engineering College) and an MBA (UBC). Nishant has taught Statistics at Douglas College and Commodity Trading lab course with MFRE. Nishant has a keen interest in trading based on technical indicators and options trading, which he uses in managing his personal stock portfolio
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