Dr. Lavigne is a native of New York State, born in Saranac Lake at the heart of the Adirondack Park. After studying ecology as an undergraduate at Brown University, Amanda moved back to the region and began her graduate work at Clarkson University in June 2000. She fulfilled her M.S. requirements in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department, and then transferred to Clarkson’s interdisciplinary Environment Science and Engineering program to complete her doctoral studies. Amanda’s research has focused on understanding the sustainability of fuel ethanol supply systems that utilize traditional and non-traditional biomass sources as feedstocks through life cycle modeling, the development of critical assessment metrics, and the analysis of industry-partner data. Recently, she has been focusing on developing new metrics that can incorporate numerous biomass utilization options into comparative energy assessments. Amanda has also become involved with several regionally-focused projects that are striving to understand the energy use patterns and trends within the Adirondack Park and surrounding upstate New York areas to help foster the development of appropriate alternative energy sources for the region.