Jason "Jake" Hawes is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wyoming School of Computing and Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources. Jake is an interdisciplinary scholar of the environment, exploring the intersection of industrial ecology with social and spatial science. At this intersection, his lab employs mixed methods to explore more robust modeling and planning for coupled natural-human systems. Prior to arriving at Wyoming, Jake worked with the Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience division at Idaho National Laboratory, where he retains a joint appointment.
Jake's main research/work interest areas:
My lab uses interdisciplinary computational and community-engaged methods to explore synergies and tradeoffs between sustainability, resilience, and justice, with a special focus on:
- Computing- and AI-enabled climate adaptation and community resilience;
- Critical infrastructure resilience, institutional interdependence, and natural hazards;
- The relationship between natural hazards and community adaptive capacity;
- Distributed circularity and community-led sustainability, particularly in food systems.
Jake's favorite cities and why:
My work explores urbanism and urban systems in the context of broader natural resource trends, so I think about cities of all sizes ... Chicago will always be special to me - it was the place that made me fall in love with cities. My favorite city I've worked in is probably Paris - I don't think I need to explain that one to this audience. And my favorite small city is Laramie, WY - dropped on a high plain sandwiched between two beautiful mountain ranges, it's the city that is my sandbox for both work and play ... come visit us at UW!
Recent publications
Goldstein, B. P., Levy, D., Hawes, J. K., & Finn, B. M. (2026). A typology of resource circularity in cities. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 227, 108743. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2025.108743
- In this work led by former SUS chair Ben Goldstein and MS student Dani Levy, we explored the types of circularity in cities, arguing that a form of decentralized circularity we call urban symbiosis can be an important piece for material reuse and recycling in cities.
Capnerhurst, H., Quigley, H., & Hawes, J. (2024). Sustainable agriculture impacts in urban settings make the case for federal investments. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 14(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2024.141.002
- In the waning days of the Biden administration, I collaborated with Hagan and Hannah, both at food system non-profits, to highlight the important ways that urban ag can contribute to more sustainable and resilient cities, with a particular focus on the ways that federal policy has enabled or undermined this. Folks might find this interesting if they are interested in the ways that industrial ecology work can inform policy briefs.
Hawes, J. K., Goldstein, B. P., Newell, J. P., Dorr, E., Caputo, S., Fox-Kämper, R., Grard, B., Ilieva, R. T., Fargue-Lelièvre, A., Poniży, L., Schoen, V., Specht, K., & Cohen, N. (2024). Comparing the carbon footprints of urban and conventional agriculture. Nature Cities, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-023-00023-3
- This work highlights carbon footprint as one way of understanding urban food systems, and it really asks us to consider the ways that metrics and methods can be both useful and limited. An interesting read for those who work in food systems or those interested in holistic social-ecological systems analysis in the context of LCA.
