Namgon Kwag works for Eagon Ltd., a luxury Korean building products supplier and builder. He has worked for Eagon for 12 years, beginning in the flooring factory and he is now the Team Manger of the Management Support Team, and is responsible for accounting, financing, labor affairs and strategic planning. Namgon is spending six-months at WFI searching for products to introduce to the Korean building market, including wood and non-wood products.

Deepak is a senior development specialist with nearly 3 decades of experience working in rural development and environment, including extension, capacity building, planning and monitoring, in Nepal and other countries in South, Central and South-East Asia. He currently heads a non profit organization in Nepal called Search-Nepal. Nepal, with 10 of the 14 highest mountains in the world, suffered environmental degradation, deforestation, and soil erosion from the 1950s-1970s due to poor policies. However, the government and private sector have since worked together for better laws and Nepal has seen much improvement since, especially in reforestation, environmental protection, conservation and biodiversity. Improvements have also been made to promote a variety of forest ownerships, including community, leasehold and private forest. National parks have been created, bringing in much needed eco- and heritage- tourism and mountaineering. Deepak will spend 12 months researching comparative environmental legislations in the US and other Fellows’ countries in forestry, environment, national parks, conservation and biological diversity. Deepak’s study aims to identify good policy case studies that balance population, environment and development.

Dr. Linsen Zhao is a professor in Landscape Architecture at the Southwest Forestry College in Kunming, Yunnan, China. He is sponsored by the China Scholarship Council. Linsen’s background is in silviculture, however, he has been working in urban forestry since 2001. During his 6 month fellowship, Linsen will research social issues related to urban forestry, and is particularly interested in public participation in planning, planting and maintaining urban forests. He will also spend time working with research methodology for carbon sequestration by urban vegetation and various models that estimate the benefits of urban forests such as STRATUM and CITYGreen.

Dr. Min Zhao is an Associate Professor at Shanghai Normal University, in Shanghai, China. Her major research revolves around the impact of global climate change on terrestrial ecosystems, with an emphasis on forest carbon cycles. She will complete a one year Fellowship at WFI to conduct research on methods for estimating forest carbon cycles for urban forests and urban forest functions.