Lawrence Band, Ph.D., has been named director of the Institute for the Environment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Band succeeds Doug Crawford-Brown, Ph.D., who led the Institute until earlier this year and has left to become a senior sustainability adviser to the firm of Pell Frischmann in the United Kingdom.
Band has been Voit Gilmore Distinguished Professor of Geography in the College of Arts and Sciences since coming to UNC in 1998. An experienced university administrator, he served as chairman of the geography department from 2002 to 2007.
His research focuses on the hydrological and ecological structure, function and dynamics of watersheds, a critical area for North Carolina and the nation in view of recent droughts and storms.
“Professor Band’s deep knowledge of the mission and goals of the Institute and his impressive record of scholarship and administrative leadership have prepared him well to direct this critically important campus-wide center,” said Dr. Bernadette Gray-Little, executive vice chancellor and provost of the university. “I look forward to the contributions that Professor Band and the Institute will make to increasing our understanding of the pressing environmental problems that we face, and developing solutions to them.”
The Institute for the Environment was founded in 2006 as an expansion of the Carolina Environmental Program (CEP). It advances interdisciplinary environmental research, educates the next generation of leaders committed to health and stewardship of our planet, and informs and engages the public to enable environmental problem solving.
Band, a New York native, received his bachelor’s degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of California, Los Angeles. Before coming to Carolina, he served on the faculty of San Francisco State University, Hunter College and the University of Toronto.
Institute for the Environment contact: Danielle Del Sol, (919) 962-0965, delsol@email.unc.edu
News Services contact: Patric Lane, (919) 962-8596, patric_lane@unc.edu