I grew up in Canada watching ecosystems get cleared and subdivisions go up in their place — then get named Meadow Heights, Forest Glen, Willow Creek. The nature was eulogized in the name while it was erased in practice. That strangeness never left me.
So I became an ecological engineer. I spent years studying urban nature — in the lab, in the field, across four continents — before deciding the most useful thing I could do was get that knowledge into the hands of the people who actually shape cities.
That's how the Internet of Nature® started — as a PhD dissertation at University College Dublin and MIT's Senseable City Lab, and then as something much, much bigger.
The work, the background, the why
Photo credit: Roger Cremers for National Geographic
In 2024, after years of research, I published THE NATURE OF OUR CITIES with HarperCollins — with the Internet of Nature® at its heart. It became a #1 Amazon bestseller, won several awards, and was translated into Dutch; the paperback came out in March 2026.
A deeply reported journey, part memoir, part investigation, the book travels from the heat-mapped streets of Portland to the LiDAR-mapped forests of Singapore, from New York City's intelligent flood gardens to the AI-powered insect cameras of Amsterdam — and finds the same urgent question in every city: can cities learn to live with nature before they can't live without it?
I've been named a National Geographic Explorer, a Fulbright Scholar, a Van Leer Foundation Fellow, and a Forbes 30 Under 30. I also host the Internet of Nature Podcast — conversations with the researchers, practitioners, and city-makers doing this work on the ground — now in its seventh season with over 50,000 downloads.
Since the book came out, the work has taken me in directions I didn't anticipate. I've advised investment firms on which technologies to use for biodiversity monitoring across real estate portfolios. I've helped shape the next decade of park management at Chapultepec — Mexico City's largest urban forest, and one of the largest in the world. And I've partnered in multi-million dollar research initiatives to understand which elements of urban nature are most beneficial for human health.
My book opens in a city without nature — and ends in one where it's been woven back in. That gap, between where cities are and where they could be, is where all of this work lives. I don't think we're going back. But getting there requires better tools, better data, and people willing to make the case for nature at every table where cities are planned and funded. That's what I'm here to do.
.jpg)
