Francis Vanek (above) grew up in Ithaca, NY, and received bachelors’ degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Asian Studies from Cornell University in 1991. Thereafter he earned a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, Dept of Systems Engineering in 1998, where his doctoral research focused on the environmental impact of freight transport and logistics activities. From 1998 to 2000 he was a Lecturer in Logistics Management at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, where his teaching and research continued to focus on these issues. Since 2001 he has served as a Senior Lecturer and Research Assistant in the School of Civil Engineering at Cornell, where he teaches and researches in the areas of energy efficiency, alternative energy, and energy for transportation. He is lead author of the full-length textbook and technical reference Energy Systems Engineering: Evaluation and Implementation (third edition 2016) and Sustainable Transportation Systems Engineering (2014), both from McGraw-Hill. Lastly, he is since 2002 a resident of the Ecovillage at Ithaca cohousing community, where he is a community leader in the area of green technology and alternative transportation.