About the Editors
Chief Editor: William Burnside, PhD, Springer Nature, USA
Bill joined Nature Sustainability in 2017 as an associate editor and then senior editor, covering agriculture, conservation, life and Earth science, and urban science. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the US National Socio-environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC). His PhD in biology was awarded by the University of New Mexico, where he studied large-scale human ecology and the influence of metabolic constraints on ecological patterns and processes, collaborating with scholars in anthropology, computer science, ecology and physics. Before his doctoral work, he edited environmental and life science textbooks and earned an MS in natural resources and environment from the University of Michigan and a BA in human biology from Stanford University. Originally from the city of El Paso, Texas, Bill is based in the New York office.
Email: william.burnside@us.nature.com
Associate Editor: Allison Laskey, PhD, Springer Nature, USA
Allison joined Nature Cities as Associate Editor in May 2023. She is primarily responsible for research and opinion pieces about urban planning, public policy, community development, and related social science, humanities, and interdisciplinary contributions. Before joining the Nature family, Allison was a postdoctoral researcher at Wayne State University studying community economic development and resilience in critical infrastructure systems. Allison earned a PhD in urban and environmental planning and policy from the University of California, Irvine, where she conducted an ethnographic study of a long term Detroit resident association fighting to stop displacement, resegregation, and gentrification. Prior to PhD studies, Allison worked at the IDA Science and Technology Policy Institute. Allison is based in the Washington, D.C. office.
Email: allison.laskey@us.nature.com
Associate Editor: Sebastián Villamizar-Santamaría, PhD, Springer Nature, USA
Sebastián (he/him) joined Nature Cities in June 2023 as an Associate Editor handling research and opinion from sociology, geography, and other social sciences. Before joining the team, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, a visiting professor at the University of Florence, Italy, and lead editor at Open Global Rights. Sebastián studied a BA in Sociology at Universidad del Rosario and an MA in Geography at Universidad de los Andes, both in Bogotá, Colombia, where he is from. His PhD dissertation at the CUNY Graduate Center analyzes the inter-class dynamics in an area undergoing rapid rural gentrification, and the book manuscript based on it is currently under contract at Springer. Sebastián is based in the New York City office.
Email: sebastian.villamizarsantamaria@us.nature.com
Associate Editor: Wei Chen, PhD, Springer Nature, China
Wei joined Nature Cities as Associate Editor in March 2024. She handles research and opinion involving urban mapping and modelling, engineering, and Earth science, among others. Before joining the team, Wei was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Geography at The University of Hong Kong, specializing in urban remote sensing research. She earned her PhD in Geology and Environmental Science from Iowa State University in the United States, where her research focused on utilizing earth observations and process-based models to assess the impacts of urbanization and climate change on building energy consumption and emissions. Prior to her PhD studies, Wei obtained an MS in Cartography and GIS from the Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Wei is based in the Shanghai office.
Email: wei.chen@cn.nature.com
The Research Cross-Journal Editorial Team supports the Nature-branded research journals, with a focus on handling primary research manuscripts.
The Reviews Cross-Journal Editorial Team handles Research Briefing articles for the Nature-branded research journals.
