Dave Zelinka, PhD, EIT
Founder & CEO
Dave Zelinka is a data-driven interdisciplinary engineer, systems thinker, & complexity scientist who creates insight from chaos. His passion is to understand & address humankind’s most pressing issues, including sustainable energy, climate change, international development, conflict, peacebuilding, corruption, urbanization. He is the Founder & CEO of Civitas Systems, a consulting company merging systems approaches and data science to solve problems in complex systems—turning his passion into a life-long career.
Dave attained a Ph.D. in Civil Systems and a second M.S. in Global Engineering in three years from the Mortenson Center for Global Engineering in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He holds his first M.S. in environmental & sustainability engineering from the University of Colorado, Denver and a B.S. in Environmental & Ecological Engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette.
As the founder & a consultant with Civitas Systems. he provides expertise & research support to the United Institute of Peace (USIP) as a systems thinking expert & graph data scientist for various justice, governance, and democracy projects in Western Africa and the Balkans. Additionally, he is a researcher with the Santa Fe Institute - in collaboration with USIP - an interdisciplinary research institute dedicated to the application of complex adaptive systems to understanding and addressing humankind’s most difficult problems that transcend and cross the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines.
Outside of Civitas Systems, Dave is an environmental, social. & governance (ESG) consultant for Optera, where he aids companies in meeting their sustainability and ESG goals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions through science-based targets in line with the Paris Climate Agreement.
Dave is an active researcher with many projects in progress & bodies of work under development. His research specializes in applied complexity science, system dynamics, network analysis, sustainable development, sociopolitical systems, data science, the water-energy-land-food nexus, grounded theory, systems philosophy & ontology, sustainable energy, corruption, and peace engineering. His work has been presented in conferences by the United Nations, System Dynamics Society, American Society for Engineering Education, and the International Sustainable Development Research Society. His research has been published in the International Journal of System Dynamics Applications; the Handbook of Research on Modeling, Analysis, and Control of Complex Systems; and the Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. He currently has papers under review in Nature Energy and the Journal of Peace Research.
He recently concluded a postdoctoral research project on the effect of climate and energy policy of the global electricity sector as a renewable energy data scientist and geospatial analyst. Dave was an affiliate professor at Metropolitan State University, where he created & taught an entire course in systems engineering and industrial ecology. While a doctoral student, he spent four months in Israel performing fieldwork to understand the use of household-scale wastewater treatment systems and study the conflict from a hydropolitical perspective. As a master’s student, he was a technical and policy analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, forwarding the commercialization of sustainable energy in various states across the country and researching the renewable energy potential of Caribbean countries.
Dave lives at the base of the Rocky Mountains in Boulder, Colorado. He spends his free time biking, climbing, & being outside; playing grand epic strategy & adventure computer games and Cards Against Humanity; exploring transhumanism, AI, and futurism; & enjoying science fiction, cyberpunk, & Lovecraftian works.
Michael Tarbert
Founder & President
Climate Change Resilience Services
Lead MFA’s climate resilience business and business development team. Responsibilities include assisting colleagues to understand how climate change may affect their projects, deciphering how to apply data and its limitations, and understanding external climate change applications to incorporate into design. Other activities include representing MFA at climate resilience events, contributing to teams with climate resilience components and building internal documentation for MFA to perform vulnerability and adaptation capacity assessments for environmental clean-up projects.
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sUAS Mapping
Leads MFA’s small, unmanned aircraft system mapping services, including collection of aerial photography and its analysis. Routinely communicates with clients to coordinate work product requirements, assists with surveyor establishment of ground control points and day-of site logistics. Perform aerial data collection using drones (automated and manual) to obtain photos and other data, which can then be analyzed using specialized photogrammetry software for the purposes of creating two- and three-dimensional work products. Data is used for engineering design, permitting, communication and marketing.
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Sustainability Squad
Initiated need for internal sustainability team. Created team framework, short-term and long-term objectives, and coach team and individuals to reach sustainability goals. Currently leads the sustainability team, including facilitation of meetings, meeting planning, establishing action items, and establishing communications to notify entire company of progress, goals and how other individuals can get involved and make a difference.
Solid Waste Planning and Engineering
Contributes to a variety of solid waste management projects that range from engineering design for existing and conceptual facilities in Oregon and Washington to analysis of waste diversion facilities. Other projects are focused on natural resource recovery of waste to process into usable products. Serves as a key member of the solid waste business development team.
Stormwater Services
Sample, analyze, design, and oversee construction of stormwater treatment systems for a variety of private and public clients, including solid waste and recycling facilities, lumber yards, quarries, and open public spaces. Designs often include performing return on investment and resilience analysis to determine the most cost-effective solutions for a variety of future design storms. Directs data collection and analysis efforts, manages the budget and design and supports other team members with tasks as needed.