Marty Heller

Senior Research Specialist with the Center for Sustainable Systems at University of Michigan

Marty Heller, PhD is a senior research specialist with the Center for Sustainable Systems(CSS) at University of Michigan. His most recent research interests involve evaluating the environmental impact of dietary choices and food waste, and integrating nutritional information with environmental assessments of food and diet. He has conducted life cycle assessment studies of short rotation woody biomass energy crops, a large-scale vertically integrated US organic dairy, and as part of an international team, a comprehensive, spatially-explicit study of US dairy production. He also developed a seminal report on Life Cycle-Based Sustainability Indicators for Assessment of the U. S. Food System. He received a BS in chemical engineering from Michigan State and a PhD, also in chemical engineering, from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Marty has spent much of the past 15 years growing organic vegetables, starting and managing market farms/CSAs. Through a local non-profit, he helped develop and implement a Farmer Residency program to assist landless farmers in launching farm businesses. He grew up on a traditional livestock farm in southeast Michigan. (Ann Arbor, MI)