Professor, School of Environmental and Forest Science
University of Washington
Box 352100, Seattle, WA 98195-2100
(206) 543-1918
Over the course of his career Ivan has been deeply interested in understanding the factors that influence the adoption and diffusion of new products and technologies within the forest products industry and end-user communities. He has conducted extensive research on the marketing of lesser-used wood species and non-timber forest products, both in the US and in lesser-developed countries in Africa and Asia and has developed extensive collaborative relationships with researchers in China, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Ghana and Vietnam. Ivan’s research has also looked at builders and architects in the US, Japan and China regarding their perceptions and use of new and innovative building materials and programs. He recently completed a market study of homebuilders and architects in the US, Japan and China regarding their perceptions and use of green building programs as well as their perceptions of the comparative environmental performance of wood, concrete and steel building materials. Ivan has also conducted extensive research looking at the impact of illegally sourced logs on the global trade of timber and his current research looks at the impact of legality verification laws (e.g., US Lacey Act) on material specification decisions within the furniture and flooring industries in tropical countries as well as the adoption of chain-of-custody certification by export-oriented wood manufacturers in developing countries. In addition, Ivan has conducted several studies looking at the economic contribution of the forest products sector to the economies and employment within timber dependent communities, particularly within the Pacific Northwest region. Over the past five years he has been expanding CINTRAFOR’s research activities to include the production and marketing of bio-char produced from residual woody biomass and is working with a group of engineers at the UW who have developed a proprietary blanket technology for more efficiently producing biochar in developing countries. In conjunction with these activities, Ivan’s research team has been active in conducting life cycle inventories for these and other wood products and he has taken an active role in the management of the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials (CORRIM).