Culhane Bio 2012:
'National Geographic Emerging Explorer
T.H. Culhane, Ph.D., first took courses at Mercy College, where his mother
was a professor and Dean for 40 years, during summer breaks while studying
Biological Anthropology at Harvard. He began his teaching career in
1987 at Dobbs Ferry High School, the same high school he had
graduated from in 1980. He came back to Dobbs Ferry as a young
Harvard Graduate returning from a Rockefeller Fellowship that had
taken him for a year and a half to Borneo and Baghdad to research
wilderness and urban ecology and development issues. Back in Dobbs
he immediately started leading student field trips into the
Wicker's Creek watershed in the Mercy College Woods, which was a
former hunting ground of the Weckquasgeek Indians, to teach biology.
Culhane left Dobbs Ferry on a
scholarship to the British American Drama Academy in London and
Oxford and decided when he returned to the US to apply the
principles of "drama in education" and take on the
challenge of teaching science in inner city schools in Los Angeles.
Experiencing a great success in merging academic and vocational
education, bringing science alive through theatre, animation, music and video production and computer games,
Culhane continued working with 'at-risk' youth from 1989 until 1997,
building a program called DEMMO Productions (Digital Engineering for
Multimedia Occupations). He won awards as a NASA Challenger Fellow
and a Space Science Teacher Trainer with the Jet Propulsion Labs and
developed what became known as the "Eutopia Curriculum",
which taught students how to design their own better world here on
earth by learning about the science of biospherics and terraforming
that NASA proposes to use to create habitable colonies on the Moon and Mars.
This type of long term thinking led
Culhane to pursue Masters and Ph.D. degrees at UCLA in Urban
Planning, working on issues of agroforestry, renewable energy and
sustainable development and teaching a class in Global
Environmentalism. To complete his doctorate Culhanespent years in Guatemala and then in
Egypt, where he and his German wife lived in the historic Islamic
slums teaching solar and biogas system construction and working with
the Zabaleen garbage recycler community and where Culhane helped
create the Wadi Environmental Science Center.
The Culhane's moved to Germany when
they had their son 4 years ago and the Culhanes began working as
adjunct professors at Mercy College teaching on-line courses in
Environmental Psychology and Sports Sociology. With the help of
National Geographic innovation awards the Culhanes expanded the work
of their NGO, 'Solar CITIES', to several African countries, working
on poverty alleviation issues and addressing deforestation and indoor
air pollution through their kitchen-waste-to-energy-and-
Culhane Bio 2012 #2:
Thomas Culhane is an urban planner whose
German-Egyptian non-governmental organization Solar CITIES, which he
founded in the slums of Cairo, Egypt, trains residents in some of the
poorest neighborhoods in Africa and the Middle East how to build and
install rooftop solar water heaters, biodigestors and other renewable
energy, water, and waste management systems. Culhane
lives in Essen, Germany but spends half of each year travelling to
developing countries to learn about and continue developing appropriate
emerging technologies that can be adapted to impoverished informal
communities. As one of the recipients of the National Geographic
Blackstone Innovation Challenge Grants, Culhane
is working with Katey Walter Anthony and Alton Byers to develop more
efficient food-waste-to-biogas reactors that can be applied to
impoverished areas with cold, arctic alpine conditions. They are working
with fellow National Geographic explorers Grace Gobbo, Kakenya Ntaiya,
Beverly Goodman, Ken Banks, and Dereck and Beverly Joubert to apply
these technologies to tackle deforestation in the remote and mountainous
areas of Africa and Nepal and to help provide energy and food security
in urban Israel and Palestine. For the 2011-12 Academic year Culhane,
who is a Google Science Fair judge, was working with the Office of
Naval Research on a program called "PORPOISE: Robotics with a Purpose"
that teaches under-served youth how to create microcontroller-based
environmental sensing and autonomous aquatic robotic platforms. He is now a visiting faculty researcher at Mercy College in New York. Culhane is a 2009 National Geographic Emerging Explorer.
Culhane Bio 3, 2013:
Thomas Henry Culhane, Ph.D.:
After
graduating from Harvard with honors in Biological Anthropology, T.H.
Culhane spent a year doing field-work in the primary rainforests of
Borneo and Sumatra studying Orangutans and Seed Dispersal Mechanisms as a
Michael Rockefeller Fellow and later worked as a science writer. He
studied agroforestry systems in Guatemala for his Masters degree and
studied the micro-economics and micro-engineering of hot water systems
in Cairo for his UCLA Ph.D.
Culhane
spent eight years teaching science to inner-city "at-risk-youth" in the
ghettoes of Los Angeles, developing award winning science curricula for
NASA's Challenger Centre. At Hollywood High School T.H. Culhane helped
build a "movie studio" for training youth in the production of science
documentary videos. He created the "Melodic-Mnemonics: Science Education
through Music and Multimedia" and DEMMO Productions „Digital
Engineering for Multi-Media Occupations“ programs, teaching kids how to
bring science textbooks to life through the magic of "Hollywood." While
a Ph.D. candidate at UCLA in ‚Environmental Analysis and Policy’ T.H.
Culhane committed himself to equitable and sustainable development in
his ancestral homeland in the Arab World. Together with his wife ex-wife Dr.
Sybille Frütel Culhane he lived in Egypt for five years, creating their
NGO Solar C3ITIES.
T.H.
Culhane, who is a visiting faculty researcher at Mercy College, New
York, where he has been teaching Environmental Psychology for several years, presented at the Aspen Energy Roundtable and the Aspen
Environmental Forum and at UNESCO. He is currently a judge of the new
Google Science Fair, and the Scientific American Science in Action Award, sharing his belief in the power of citizen science
with a new generation.
Recognized as a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2009, T.H. Culhane now wears two hats, working as an urban planner whose non-governmental organization, Solar C3ITIES,
works on community and family scale renewable energy, water, and waste
management systems, and as a STEM robotics and environmental engineering curriculum
developer working for Mercy College and for the Office of Naval Research, helping to ensure that
under-served, minority and low-income youth around the world can realize
their dreams in a world increasingly dominated by mechatronix
technologies.
Culhane,
who went to both Clown College and Harvard College and values knowledge
and human potential in all domains, has trained residents of some of
the poorest slums and villages, from Cairo to Palestine to Nairobi,
Nepal and Nigeria, to build solar hot water and electric systems and
kitchen-waste-to-cooking-gas biogas systems and is now teaching
stakeholders from disadvantaged communities how to embed
microcontrollers in their own Environmental Sensing Technologies.
He
currently spends part of the year in California, working on renewable
energy, robotics and multimedia projects and traveling to other
developing countries to learn appropriate emerging technologies that can
be combined with artificial intelligence and adapted to the challenges
facing African and Middle Eastern informal communities. He seems to
think Insinkerators and computer games can help save the world.
Culhane Bio 4, 2013 :
T.H. CULHANE
Thomas Taha Rassam Culhane (a.k.a "T.H.") was born near the Museum of Science and Industry on the south side of Chicago to an Iraqi-Lebanese mother and an Irish-American father and developed his love of
engineering by almost religiously attending the museum's forward-thinking science exhibits.When his Newsweek journalist father, John Culhane, moved the family to New York, Culhane was chosen by
Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus president Irvin Feld to be the youngest graduate of their Clown College at the age of 13 and he joined the "Greatest Show on Earth" the following summer. In the circus, during the Cold War, Culhane toured with Russian and Chinese acrobats, with Elephants, Chimpanzees and other wonderful animals and people from every country and culture, who all got along.These experiences
instilled in Culhane a belief that all God's creatures, Great and Small, could cooperate peacefully and harmoniously toward the creation of joyful productions, and that science, art and industry could be the drivers of positive social transformation.After graduating with honors from Harvard in Biological Anthropology, this conviction was confirmed during a year spent on a Rockefeller Fellowship in
the primary rainforests of Borneo where Culhane worked with Harvard Professor Mark Leighton
studying orangutans and gibbons and then lived with Missionaries and Melayu and Dyak tribespeople. In the jungle Culhane found that most organisms in environments with large biodiversity and cultural diversity quotients adopted "evolutionarily stable strategies" that led to long term sustainability.This experience led
Culhane into "the urban jungles" of inner-city education in the ghettoes of Los Angeles where for nearly a
decade he applied his insights to working with multi-cultural "at-risk" youth and gang kids and
discovered that a focus on common urban environmental challenges and their technological solutions created a context for cooperation, improving young people's education and their peace making skills. (He and his ex-wife, Dr. Sybille Culhane, who taught negotiation and conflict resolution at the Sadat Academy for Management Sciences, applied those insights to connecting Egyptian youth with Israeli Jordanian and Palestinian youth in workshops in cooperation with the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and Al Najah University.)
Thomas Taha Rassam Culhane (a.k.a "T.H.") was born near the Museum of Science and Industry on the south side of Chicago to an Iraqi-Lebanese mother and an Irish-American father and developed his love of
engineering by almost religiously attending the museum's forward-thinking science exhibits.When his Newsweek journalist father, John Culhane, moved the family to New York, Culhane was chosen by
Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus president Irvin Feld to be the youngest graduate of their Clown College at the age of 13 and he joined the "Greatest Show on Earth" the following summer. In the circus, during the Cold War, Culhane toured with Russian and Chinese acrobats, with Elephants, Chimpanzees and other wonderful animals and people from every country and culture, who all got along.These experiences
instilled in Culhane a belief that all God's creatures, Great and Small, could cooperate peacefully and harmoniously toward the creation of joyful productions, and that science, art and industry could be the drivers of positive social transformation.After graduating with honors from Harvard in Biological Anthropology, this conviction was confirmed during a year spent on a Rockefeller Fellowship in
the primary rainforests of Borneo where Culhane worked with Harvard Professor Mark Leighton
studying orangutans and gibbons and then lived with Missionaries and Melayu and Dyak tribespeople. In the jungle Culhane found that most organisms in environments with large biodiversity and cultural diversity quotients adopted "evolutionarily stable strategies" that led to long term sustainability.This experience led
Culhane into "the urban jungles" of inner-city education in the ghettoes of Los Angeles where for nearly a
decade he applied his insights to working with multi-cultural "at-risk" youth and gang kids and
discovered that a focus on common urban environmental challenges and their technological solutions created a context for cooperation, improving young people's education and their peace making skills. (He and his ex-wife, Dr. Sybille Culhane, who taught negotiation and conflict resolution at the Sadat Academy for Management Sciences, applied those insights to connecting Egyptian youth with Israeli Jordanian and Palestinian youth in workshops in cooperation with the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and Al Najah University.)
In the late 1990s Culhane immersed himself in Urban Planning at UCLA,conducting field work in rural rain forest villages in Guatemala and earning a Masters in Regional and International Development. He then entered a Ph.D. program in Environmental Analysis and Policy to explore how recent immigrants from rural areas to inner-citycould transform their adaptive knowledge-base to facilitate survival in degraded urban environments while Culhane performed urban ecology experiments of his own in waste recycling, water and energy management and self-provisioning, living among the poor at the Los Angeles Eco-Village. When his mother, Hind Rassam Culhane , a professor of psychology, returned to Iraq in 2003 to head an educational improvement program, Culhane, eager to find a good dissertation topic nearby, moved to Egypt to work on environmental science education and training among the urban poor. He chose to work with Professor Randall Crane on hot water demand among the poor as a topic for his Ph.D. and with the Zabaleen community of garbage recyclers on local construction of solar energy and food-waste-to-fuel biogas systems for his "Ph.-do". He believes this is home biogas and solar energy systems are the easiest and most logical first steps toward creating sustainable grass-roots industrial ecology systems, something that he feels could unite people of all faiths toward a common goal. He believes, in true circus fashion, that though things may get tough, "the show must go on."
He currently lives half the year in Germany and half in the US, with frequent trips to the Middle East and Africa to conduct field work and urban permaculture systems training.
Culhane Bio 5:
Thomas Culhane is an urban
planner whose German-Egyptian non-governmental organization Solar
CITIES, which he founded in the slums of Cairo Egypt, trains
residents in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Africa and the
Middle East how to build and install rooftop solar water heaters,
biodigestors and other renewable energy, water, and waste management
systems. Culhane lives in Essen, Germany but spends half of each year
traveling to developing countries to learn about and continue
developing appropriate emerging technologies that can be adapted to
impoverished informal communities. As a visiting faculty researcher
at Mercy College and one of the recipients of the National Geographic
Blackstone Innovation Challenge Grants, Culhane is working with
fellow National Geographic explorers to apply these technologies to
tackle deforestation and indoor air pollution and rural areas and to
help provide energy and promote health and food security in urban
slums.
Culhane Bio 6: (125 word version)
Thomas Culhane is an urban
planner whose non-governmental organization “Solar CITIES” trains
residents in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Africa and the
Middle East how to build and install rooftop solar water heaters,
biodigestors and other renewable energy, water, and waste management
systems. Culhane lives in Germany, spending half of each year
traveling to developing countries to learn about and continue
developing appropriate emerging technologies that can be adapted to
impoverished informal communities. A visiting faculty researcher at
Mercy College and recipient of two National Geographic Blackstone
Innovation Challenge Grants, Culhane is working with fellow
explorers to apply these technologies to tackle deforestation and
indoor air pollution in rural areas and to help provide energy and
promote health and food security in urban slums.
Culhane Bio 7: (Sept 9, 2016)
Dr. Thomas Henry "Taha" Rassam Culhane is a faculty member of the Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida, Tampa, a member of the Clinton Global Initiative and the United Religions Initiative and the co-founding director of the not-for-profit educational corporation "Solar CITIES" which helps community stakeholders solve urban ecology and development issues surrounding waste-water, solid waste, food security and decentralized clean energy production. As a National Geographic Emerging Explorer since 2009 Culhane introduced his own designs for low cost biodigesters to community leaders in many African countries, including building with former Nigerian president Obasanjo at his home and community, as well as working in schools and communities in or next to wildlife reserves in Kenya, Tanazania, Rwanda, Botswana, South Africa and Swaziland to help stop deforestation, soil erosion, wildfires and indoor air pollution. He has gone around the world teaching others to innovate, design and construct their own home scale biodigester and vertical aeroponic systems out of low-cost local materials as part of his "food-waste-to-fuel-and-fertilizer" initiative. For the past four years Culhane has been a Visiting Faculty Researcher and full professor at Mercy College New York, teaching courses in Environmental Sustainability and Justice, Environmental Psychology and Urban Ecology and leading students on "service learning" and "voluntourism" trips to share environmental technologies in impoverished parts of the Middle East and the Caribbean. Culhane has been a Google Science Fair Judge for 6 years and has worked with the US Office of Naval Research and UCLA on STEM science education projects with at risk-youth. In 2010 Culhane and the Palestinian Wildlife Society introduced small scale biogas technology to stakeholders in the West Bank and Gaza through funding from the US Embassy, US AID and private foundations, and he has been working with the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and Alumni Network, Engineers without Borders Palestine, Al Najah University, and the Eco-village Network Global Campus, and the HomeBiogas company in Palestine and Israel on a yearly basis since 2006, working to help ensure "peace through prosperity and permaculture" . Culhane got his Ph.D. from UCLA in Urban Planning, living with and working on solar energy and waste management projects with the trash recycling communities of Cairo Egypt, and his Master's in Regional and International Development working on urban agroforestry issues in Guatemala. His undergraduate work at Harvard included a year in the primary rainforests of Borneo, working on community ecology issues with hunter-gatherer tribes. His mission is to empower communities to regain ecological self-sufficiency and economic security through regenerative systems integration, believing that we have all the puzzle pieces to make thriving societies, and just need to come together and put them together.
Culhane Bio 8: 250 Word Bio for Nat Geo Symposium Program 2016
Dr. Thomas Henry "Taha" Rassam Culhane is a faculty member of the Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida, a member of the Clinton Global Initiative and the United Religions Initiative and the co-founding director of the not-for-profit "Solar CITIES" which helps community stakeholders solve urban ecology and development issues surrounding waste-water, solid waste, food security and decentralized clean energy production. As a National Geographic Emerging Explorer since 2009 Culhane introduced his own designs for low cost biodigesters to community leaders around the world to help stop deforestation, soil erosion, wildfires and indoor air pollution. He travels to urban slums and remote villages teaching others to innovate, design and construct their own home scale biodigester and vertical aeroponic systems out of low-cost local materials as part of his "food-waste-to-fuel-and-fertil
2 paragraph bio for USF Cuba conference 2017:
Two paragraph Bio:
"Dr. Thomas Henry Culhane is a faculty member of the Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida, Tampa and the co-founding director of the not-for-profit educational corporation "Solar CITIES" which helps community stakeholders solve urban ecology and development issues surrounding waste-water, solid waste, food security and decentralized clean energy production. As a National Geographic Emerging Explorer since 2009 Culhane introduced his own designs for low cost biodigesters to community leaders in Brazil and many Latin American, Middle Eastern and African countries. His research involves closing the loop between food waste and food production, creating local resilient systems for poverty alleviation and wildlife preservation.
Bio for Summit at Sea 2017:
Dr. T.H. Culhane is a professor of Environmental Sustainability and Justice at the Patel College for Global Solutions at University of South Florida, Tampa with a passion for transforming food waste into fuel and fertilizer, harnessing this neglected form of Solar Energy to not only cook food and heat water but to grow new nutritious food. Culhane is the co-founder and president of Solar CITIES Inc., a not-for-profit environmental technology training organization that uses the trainer of trainers model to teach members of impoverished urban and rural communities all over the world how to build their own home and community scale biodigesters and vertical aeroponics food production systems with the goal of eliminating all waste.
Culhane has been a member of the HomeBiogas team since befriending its co-founder, Yair Teller, in 2010 while finishing his Ph.D. in urban planning in the trash-recyclers community of Cairo, Egypt. Over the years this friendship grew into a formal relationship in which Solar CITIES, Mercy College NY, the Arava Institute of Environmental Education and HomeBiogas have worked together on projects for several years bringing students and stakeholders from around the world to engage in biodigester education and HomeBiogas system workshops in the West Bank, Palestine, in Bedouin villages in Southern Israel, in the favelas of Rio in Brazil, in rural and residential areas of the Dominican Republic and in ecovillages, schools and homes in Portugal, Germany and the United States.
As a National Geographic Explorer since 2009 who is also instructor in the Patel College's Sustainable Tourism and Coastal Management courses, Culhane champions the use of small scale biogas to protect the health of our oceans, and has lectured and demonstrated biodigester technology on the Lindbland Expeditions National Geographic Explorer cruise ship, describing how the value they create for organic wastes not only prevents the use of firewood, charcoal that cause coastal erosion and eliminates dumping at sea, but can solve much of the plastic bag waste problem contaminating our oceans . Most recently, Culhane and Solar CITIES have become members of the Clinton Global Initiative and are fulfilling a commitment, starting this December, to bring the Home Biogas solution to the Zataari Refugee camp in Jordan to make sure that food and toilet wastes are turned from grave health problems into solutions for healthier living. On sea or on land, Culhane and the HomeBiogas team believe their technologies are the missing piece of the sustainability puzzle that will help us fulfill our Sustainable Development Goals quickly and painlessly.
Bio for Patel College 2017:
Dr. Thomas Henry "Taha" Rassam Culhane is a faculty member of the Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida, Tampa, director of the Climate Change concentration, and the co-founding director of the not-for-profit educational corporation "Solar CITIES Inc." which helps community stakeholders solve urban ecology and development issues surrounding waste-water, solid waste, food security and decentralized clean energy production. He is also a a board member of the Rosebud Continuum Sustainability Education Center in Land O Lakes, FL, where he and his wife live off-grid in an RV, using solar energy for electricity, cooking on food-waste derived biogas, recycling their shower water and growing a portion of their food hydroponically. He is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative and United Religions Initiative, bringing Food/Energy/Water Nexus solutions and systems thinking to areas in need.
As a National Geographic Emerging Explorer since 2009 Culhane introduced his own designs for low cost biodigesters to community leaders in many African countries, including building with former Nigerian president Obasanjo at his home and community, as well as working in schools and communities in or next to wildlife reserves in Kenya, Tanazania, Rwanda, Botswana, South Africa and Swaziland to help stop deforestation, soil erosion, wildfires and indoor air pollution.
He has gone around the world teaching others to innovate, design and construct their own home scale biodigester and vertical aeroponic systems out of low-cost local materials as part of his "food-waste-to-fuel-and-fertil
For the previous five years Culhane was a Visiting Faculty Researcher and full professor at Mercy College New York, teaching courses in Environmental Sustainability and Justice, Environmental Psychology and Urban Ecology and leading students on "service learning" and "voluntourism" trips to share environmental technologies in impoverished parts of the Middle East, and the Caribbean.
Culhane Bio 7: (Sept 9, 2016)
Dr. Thomas Henry "Taha" Rassam Culhane is a faculty member of the Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida, Tampa, a member of the Clinton Global Initiative and the United Religions Initiative and the co-founding director of the not-for-profit educational corporation "Solar CITIES" which helps community stakeholders solve urban ecology and development issues surrounding waste-water, solid waste, food security and decentralized clean energy production. As a National Geographic Emerging Explorer since 2009 Culhane introduced his own designs for low cost biodigesters to community leaders in many African countries, including building with former Nigerian president Obasanjo at his home and community, as well as working in schools and communities in or next to wildlife reserves in Kenya, Tanazania, Rwanda, Botswana, South Africa and Swaziland to help stop deforestation, soil erosion, wildfires and indoor air pollution. He has gone around the world teaching others to innovate, design and construct their own home scale biodigester and vertical aeroponic systems out of low-cost local materials as part of his "food-waste-to-fuel-and-fertilizer" initiative. For the past four years Culhane has been a Visiting Faculty Researcher and full professor at Mercy College New York, teaching courses in Environmental Sustainability and Justice, Environmental Psychology and Urban Ecology and leading students on "service learning" and "voluntourism" trips to share environmental technologies in impoverished parts of the Middle East and the Caribbean. Culhane has been a Google Science Fair Judge for 6 years and has worked with the US Office of Naval Research and UCLA on STEM science education projects with at risk-youth. In 2010 Culhane and the Palestinian Wildlife Society introduced small scale biogas technology to stakeholders in the West Bank and Gaza through funding from the US Embassy, US AID and private foundations, and he has been working with the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and Alumni Network, Engineers without Borders Palestine, Al Najah University, and the Eco-village Network Global Campus, and the HomeBiogas company in Palestine and Israel on a yearly basis since 2006, working to help ensure "peace through prosperity and permaculture" . Culhane got his Ph.D. from UCLA in Urban Planning, living with and working on solar energy and waste management projects with the trash recycling communities of Cairo Egypt, and his Master's in Regional and International Development working on urban agroforestry issues in Guatemala. His undergraduate work at Harvard included a year in the primary rainforests of Borneo, working on community ecology issues with hunter-gatherer tribes. His mission is to empower communities to regain ecological self-sufficiency and economic security through regenerative systems integration, believing that we have all the puzzle pieces to make thriving societies, and just need to come together and put them together.
Culhane Bio 8: 250 Word Bio for Nat Geo Symposium Program 2016
Dr. Thomas Henry "Taha" Rassam Culhane is a faculty member of the Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida, a member of the Clinton Global Initiative and the United Religions Initiative and the co-founding director of the not-for-profit "Solar CITIES" which helps community stakeholders solve urban ecology and development issues surrounding waste-water, solid waste, food security and decentralized clean energy production. As a National Geographic Emerging Explorer since 2009 Culhane introduced his own designs for low cost biodigesters to community leaders around the world to help stop deforestation, soil erosion, wildfires and indoor air pollution. He travels to urban slums and remote villages teaching others to innovate, design and construct their own home scale biodigester and vertical aeroponic systems out of low-cost local materials as part of his "food-waste-to-fuel-and-fertil
2 paragraph bio for USF Cuba conference 2017:
Two paragraph Bio:
"Dr. Thomas Henry Culhane is a faculty member of the Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida, Tampa and the co-founding director of the not-for-profit educational corporation "Solar CITIES" which helps community stakeholders solve urban ecology and development issues surrounding waste-water, solid waste, food security and decentralized clean energy production. As a National Geographic Emerging Explorer since 2009 Culhane introduced his own designs for low cost biodigesters to community leaders in Brazil and many Latin American, Middle Eastern and African countries. His research involves closing the loop between food waste and food production, creating local resilient systems for poverty alleviation and wildlife preservation.
Culhane first visited
Cuba for a week as a graduate student in Urban Planning in
the year 2000, researching the country's leadership role in the
agroforestry use of the highly nutritious fruits, leaves and seeds of
the indigenous Maya breadnut tree, Brosimum alicastrum. Culhane spent
time doing research in the Havana public library and in the field in
Punta Maria la Gorda, where he also explored the relationship between
coastal forests and Cuba's spectacular coral reefs. He looks forward to
continuing the effort to create sustainable tourism opportunities that
benefit local communities and environments".
Bio for Summit at Sea 2017:
Dr. T.H. Culhane is a professor of Environmental Sustainability and Justice at the Patel College for Global Solutions at University of South Florida, Tampa with a passion for transforming food waste into fuel and fertilizer, harnessing this neglected form of Solar Energy to not only cook food and heat water but to grow new nutritious food. Culhane is the co-founder and president of Solar CITIES Inc., a not-for-profit environmental technology training organization that uses the trainer of trainers model to teach members of impoverished urban and rural communities all over the world how to build their own home and community scale biodigesters and vertical aeroponics food production systems with the goal of eliminating all waste.
Culhane has been a member of the HomeBiogas team since befriending its co-founder, Yair Teller, in 2010 while finishing his Ph.D. in urban planning in the trash-recyclers community of Cairo, Egypt. Over the years this friendship grew into a formal relationship in which Solar CITIES, Mercy College NY, the Arava Institute of Environmental Education and HomeBiogas have worked together on projects for several years bringing students and stakeholders from around the world to engage in biodigester education and HomeBiogas system workshops in the West Bank, Palestine, in Bedouin villages in Southern Israel, in the favelas of Rio in Brazil, in rural and residential areas of the Dominican Republic and in ecovillages, schools and homes in Portugal, Germany and the United States.
As a National Geographic Explorer since 2009 who is also instructor in the Patel College's Sustainable Tourism and Coastal Management courses, Culhane champions the use of small scale biogas to protect the health of our oceans, and has lectured and demonstrated biodigester technology on the Lindbland Expeditions National Geographic Explorer cruise ship, describing how the value they create for organic wastes not only prevents the use of firewood, charcoal that cause coastal erosion and eliminates dumping at sea, but can solve much of the plastic bag waste problem contaminating our oceans . Most recently, Culhane and Solar CITIES have become members of the Clinton Global Initiative and are fulfilling a commitment, starting this December, to bring the Home Biogas solution to the Zataari Refugee camp in Jordan to make sure that food and toilet wastes are turned from grave health problems into solutions for healthier living. On sea or on land, Culhane and the HomeBiogas team believe their technologies are the missing piece of the sustainability puzzle that will help us fulfill our Sustainable Development Goals quickly and painlessly.
Bio for Patel College 2017:
Dr. Thomas Henry "Taha" Rassam Culhane is a faculty member of the Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida, Tampa, director of the Climate Change concentration, and the co-founding director of the not-for-profit educational corporation "Solar CITIES Inc." which helps community stakeholders solve urban ecology and development issues surrounding waste-water, solid waste, food security and decentralized clean energy production. He is also a a board member of the Rosebud Continuum Sustainability Education Center in Land O Lakes, FL, where he and his wife live off-grid in an RV, using solar energy for electricity, cooking on food-waste derived biogas, recycling their shower water and growing a portion of their food hydroponically. He is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative and United Religions Initiative, bringing Food/Energy/Water Nexus solutions and systems thinking to areas in need.
As a National Geographic Emerging Explorer since 2009 Culhane introduced his own designs for low cost biodigesters to community leaders in many African countries, including building with former Nigerian president Obasanjo at his home and community, as well as working in schools and communities in or next to wildlife reserves in Kenya, Tanazania, Rwanda, Botswana, South Africa and Swaziland to help stop deforestation, soil erosion, wildfires and indoor air pollution.
He has gone around the world teaching others to innovate, design and construct their own home scale biodigester and vertical aeroponic systems out of low-cost local materials as part of his "food-waste-to-fuel-and-fertil
For the previous five years Culhane was a Visiting Faculty Researcher and full professor at Mercy College New York, teaching courses in Environmental Sustainability and Justice, Environmental Psychology and Urban Ecology and leading students on "service learning" and "voluntourism" trips to share environmental technologies in impoverished parts of the Middle East, and the Caribbean.
Culhane has been a Google Science Fair Judge for 6 years and
has worked with the US Office of Naval Research and UCLA on STEM
science education projects with at risk-youth. In 2010 Culhane and the
Palestinian Wildlife Society introduced small scale biogas technology
to stakeholders in the West Bank and Gaza through funding from the US
Embassy, US AID and private foundations, and he has been working with
the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and Alumni Network,
Engineers without Borders Palestine, Al Najah University, and the
Eco-village Network Global Campus, and the HomeBiogas company in
Palestine and Israel on a yearly basis since 2006, working to help
ensure "peace through prosperity and permaculture" .
Culhane got his
Ph.D. from UCLA in Urban Planning, living with and working on solar
energy and waste management projects with the trash recycling
communities of Cairo Egypt, and his Master's in Regional and
International Development working on urban agroforestry issues in
Guatemala. His undergraduate work at Harvard included a year in the
primary rainforests of Borneo, working on community ecology issues with
hunter-gatherer tribes. His mission is to empower communities to regain
ecological self-sufficiency and economic security through regenerative
systems integration, believing that we have all the puzzle pieces to
make thriving societies, and just need to come together and put them
together.
Hopin Profile, June 15 2021
T.H. Culhane conducted his Ph.D. research living for several years in the slums of old Islamic Cairo and crossing the "City of the Dead" graveyard every day to work with the Coptic Christian "Zabaleen" Trash Recycling Community, building solar hot water systems and biodigesters from local materials to help transform domestic wastes into valuable assets in an urban industrial ecology. He has carried those lessons and further discoveries around the world as a National Geographic Explorer and now lives off-grid with his wife and baby at the Rosebud Continuum Eco-Science Center where he continues life-testing zero-waste/circular economy principles at the home and community level while teaching at the Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida.
Culhane began his journey as a Harvard Graduate in Biological Anthropology, living with the Melayu and Dyak tribes of Borneo on a Michael C. Rockefeller Fellowship for a year and then with his Iraqi family in Baghdad during the war for six months. These experiences convinced him of the need to find simple ways to live a dignified life when infrastructure is non-existent or is compromised. He went into inner-city science teaching in the ghettoes of Los Angeles for a decade, teaching in the Perkins Academy for Academic/Vocational Partnership, creating the "Eutopia" curriculum with Ygrene's Byron DeLear to teach sustainable life skills and renewable energy to impoverished African American and Immigrant Latino communities, then went to UCLA where he earned his Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Urban Planning (Regional and International Development and Environmental Analysis and Policy).
During his Masters degree he built an off grid research lodge in the jungles of Guatemala while working with the LA Zoo Botanical Gardens to revive the use of the Maya Breadnut tree through Urban Agroforestry. In the jungles he confirmed his intuitions for how to effectively work with natural processes to transform food waste and toilet wastes into high value inputs, and in the urban slums he confirmed his intuitions that the same processes can work even better in properly designed cities. It is these insights and the techniques that bring them to life that he hopes to share with others, seeking to eliminate unnecessary suffering and environmental degradation.
Culhane Bio November 2021
Dr. T.H. Culhane is the director of the Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Program at the Patel College of Global Sustainability, USF, Tampa where he is an Associate Professor creating curriculum for and teaching courses on "Envisioning Sustainability", "Navigating the Food Energy Water Nexus", "Creating a Zero Waste Circular Economy" and "Mitigating and Adapting to Climate Change through Locally Applied Drawdown Solutions".
T.H. lives off-grid with his wife and baby at the Rosebud Continuum Eco-Science Center in Land O' Lakes, Florida where he and other faculty and PCGS graduate students, local middle and high school students and community members "life-test" the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Drawdown Technologies and share them through video production and Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality Content creation.
Culhane has been a National Geographic Explorer since 2009 and is currently working on a sustainability plan with the Serbian Royal Court, the UNDP and Government ministries in Belgrade. His chief research involves community scale "food-waste-to-fuel and fertilizer" and soil creation projects and he is passionately optimistic that, working with natural processes, this generation can reverse global warming.
Culhane Synopsis 2024:
For example, Culhane and his team at the Rosebud Continuum Eco-Science demonstration center already use community scale biodigesters and windmills, greenhouses to exploit hotter temperatures and stronger winds to offset fossil fuel use and sees a future where we turn liabilities into assets until the implementation of all our best "drawdown" technologies and ideas can bring the atmospheric greenhouse gas load down to safe levels.
Dr. T.H. Culhane is the director of the Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Program at the Patel College of Global Sustainability, USF, Tampa where he is an Associate Professor creating curriculum for and teaching courses on "Envisioning Sustainability", "Navigating the Food Energy Water Nexus", "Creating a Zero Waste Circular Economy" and "Mitigating and Adapting to Climate Change through Locally Applied Drawdown Solutions".
T.H. lives off-grid with his wife and baby at the Rosebud Continuum Eco-Science Center in Land O' Lakes, Florida where he and other faculty and PCGS graduate students, local middle and high school students and community members "life-test" the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Drawdown Technologies and share them through video production and Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality Content creation.
Culhane has been a National Geographic Explorer since 2009 and is currently working on a sustainability plan with the Serbian Royal Court, the UNDP and Government ministries in Belgrade. His chief research involves community scale "food-waste-to-fuel and fertilizer" and soil creation projects and he is passionately optimistic that, working with natural processes, this generation can reverse global warming.
Culhane Synopsis 2024:
"Dr. Culhane teaches at the Patel College of Global Sustainability and researches the transformative powers of community scale and participatory development based Climate Drawdown technologies such as DIY and small scale commercial biodigesters and food grinders to convert organic waste into fuel and fertilizer and eliminate the threats caused by landfills, complemented by innovative techniques using workshop scale shredders, grinders, granulators and crushers to repurpose plastic and glass "wastes" into eco-friendly "precious plastic" and bottle cullet based "trashcrete" sculptures, permeable paving stones and other forms of artistic, cultural and environmental assets. His expertise is on simple, low cost but scalable solutions to environmental challenges that can be done by individuals and small institutions and can be exported to developing regions.
He combines these interests with "digital twinning" and community participatory development empowerment, teaching "future sustainabilitists" Open-Source "sustainable development visualization" software such as QGIS, Blender GIS, Unity, Spatial.io and Roblox Studio" to democratize "envisioning sustainability"."
Dr. Thomas H. Culhane – community scale and participatory development, Climate Drawdown technologies, application of DIY and small scale commercial biodigesters and food grinders to convert organic waste into fuel and fertilizer, "recycling/repurposing refuse as resource", landfill avoidance, integration of workshop scale shredders, grinders, granulators and crushers to transform plastic and glass "wastes" into eco-friendly "trash art" and environmental assets, "precious plastics", "trashcrete" sculpture design, permeable paving, permaculture design, agroforestry, sustainable voluntourism, experiential learning and field education, integrated science and art curricula, STEM/STEAMM education.
For example, Culhane and his team at the Rosebud Continuum Eco-Science demonstration center already use community scale biodigesters and windmills, greenhouses to exploit hotter temperatures and stronger winds to offset fossil fuel use and sees a future where we turn liabilities into assets until the implementation of all our best "drawdown" technologies and ideas can bring the atmospheric greenhouse gas load down to safe levels.
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