Bill Sacks
Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1710 University Ave., Room 287
Madison, WI 53726 USA
608-890-0337 tel
608-265-4113 fax
wsacks@wisc.edu

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Bill is working towards a Ph.D. in Land Resources at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment. His dissertation research focuses on the effects of agricultural management on regional and global climate. He is primarily a modeler, and his work involves the development and use of a range of terrestrial ecosystem models and climate models. His advisors are Chris Kucharik and Jon Foley.

Bill received a B.A. in Computer Science from Williams College, with a concentration in Environmental Studies. Before discovering the joys of ecosystem modeling, he tried his hand at a number of other research endeavors as an undergraduate. First he spent a summer on the New Jersey shore, assisting in the research and conservation of diamondback terrapins. Next he tried working with creatures that were equally cute, but slightly less organic, programming robotic dogs to play soccer. (Incidentally, his team of robotic dogs won third place in the International RoboCup competition that year.)

The following summer, he gave up on the animal kingdom (organic and artificial), and made his first foray into ecosystem modeling, as a Research & Discover intern at the University of New Hampshire. There he designed and implemented a simple terrestrial carbon cycle model (SIPNET) and an accompanying data assimilation framework. He used this model, together with eddy covariance-derived CO2 flux data, to investigate the controls over the net ecosystem exchange of CO2 in a temperate deciduous forest.

After graduating from Williams, Bill spent a year and a half as a research assistant at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado. He continued his data assimilation research, and also took part in the Airborne Carbon in the Mountains Experiment (ACME), a field campaign aimed at constraining the regional budget of CO2 over the Colorado Rocky Mountains.

When he’s not behind a computer, Bill can often be found contra dancing, or perhaps calling a contra dance (“with your partner do-si-do!”) or playing Celtic music. He also enjoys hiking, canoeing and camping, and recently hiked the length of Vermont along the Long Trail.