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Board of Directors

The Institute’s directors are a diverse group of dedicated individuals with expertise in a variety of areas. We committed to making a difference on our planet through hands-on field projects, research, conservation & education.

Ingrid Datica

In the early 90s she served as a crew member on the Institute of Ecotechnic’s Research Vessel, Heraclitus and sailed from Venezuela to Belize. In the mid 90’s she worked as a supervisor of the Wastewater Garden constructions with Planetary Coral Reef Foundation and Centro Ecologico Akumal, on the coast of the state of Quintana Roo Mexico, and became vice- president of the PCRF field station in Akumal, Mexico. Ingrid currently lives between Akumal, Mexico, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has experience in a range of fields: ecology, event management, real estate rentals, and property management, arts, dance, and theater, photography, and paints as a hobby.

Judy Ann Hawes

October Gallery
Judy Ann Hawes, (also known as Chili), FRGS, is one of the Founders of October Gallery and Director since its opening in 1979. A native of the Rocky Mountains, she obtained a BA in French Literature from Colorado College, with a year at the Sorbonne and post-graduate work in Linguistics at Claremont Graduate School and has taught at all levels of the educational system both in the USA and Australia. A founder and director of Institute of Ecotechnics , she has managed various ecological projects in the high desert of New Mexico, the Outback of Australia and the south of France. She has traveled widely including major research trips for the October Gallery to India, Melanesia, Peru, Southern Africa and Fiji. chili@octobergallery.co.uk

Starrlight Augustine, PhD

Director, Regenerative Agriculture Division
Starrlight has 10 yrs experience in R&D for environmental risk/impact assessment models combined with hands-on work with small-scale regenerative farming & ecosystem-restoration. She lived and worked at IE project Les Marronniers (Mediterranean, France) and Heraclitus (Ocean biome, 2004-2006). Starrlight is the head of the Regenerative Agriculture Division since 2019, developing programs for ecological restoration of Synergia Ranch. She manages the agro-ecological farm at Synergia Ranch. She has participated in Dr. Elaine Ingham’s Soil Food Web school and Richard Perkins regenerative agriculture classes.

Omar Fayed

Omar Fayed is an entrepreneur, environmentalist, and businessman. He is CEO of ESTEE (Earth Space Technical Ecosystem Enterprises), based in Switzerland and Britain, that advocates human space exploration, space colonization, and sustainable human development within the biosphere. He is co-founder and CEO of EarthX, a data visualization and mapping company based on NASA’s World Wind Project. He is chairman of Synergetic Press and a fellow of the Institute of Ecotechnics.

Marie Harding

Finance, Secretary, USA
Marie Harding (Flash) and John Allen founded Synergia Ranch LLC in 1969 and, shortly after, a founding member of the Instittute. To the present day Marie has co-founded and been a director and/or financial officer of a number of the IE projects. She was alsoa builder, then, first captain of the RV Heraclitus. Marie has been a painter since 1960, with various exhibitions and a mural project for the Caravan of Dreams in Ft. Worth, TX on the History of Jazz and Blues, a Mural of Planetary Dances, and a Theater Mural of one of the Caravan of Dreams plays.

John Polk Allen

Visionary and Co-Founder
John Allen, inventor and investor, conceived and co-founded Biosphere 2. As the Biosphere 2 inventor, executive chairman, and part owner of the project, Allen and team created the science, engineering, management, and business plans necessary to bring the project to life. Allen has over two dozen publications to his credit, half scientific, the remainder in poetry, drama, essays, short stories, two novels, and ten half-hour film documentaries. Scientist, poet, playwright, entrepreneur, savant, he put his New York international projects career on hold in 1963 to make a two year journey around the planet on three thousand dollars to experience ground truths of different cultures’ ways of life. John Allen currently resides at his intentional community, Synergia Ranhc, which he bought with Marie Harding in 1969.

Deborah Parrish Snyder

Education & Outreach Director
Deborah has been a publisher and campaigner for sustainable futures and planetary stewardship for over 30 years. As the principle director of Synergetic Press since 1984, she has published more than 40 books on topics as diverse as the environment, ethnobotany, psychedelics, consciousness, cultural anthropology, and vanguard fiction and poetry. She is a director of the Institute of Ecotechnics and Executive Vice President of Global Ecotechnics Corporation (www.globalecotechnics.com), an international project development and management company, with special focus on the pastoral regeneration on a small way station in NW Australia, Birdwood Downs. She is a Trustee of the London-based October Gallery, which showcases transvangard artists from all around the world. Deborah was born in 1958 in Normal, Illinois.

Christine Handte

R/v Heraclitus Director
A director of the Institute of Ecotechnics (UK/USA) and a Director of Ecotechnics Maritime (UK). She was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Ecotechnics (I.E.) for her work with the Research Vessel Heraclitus and is a member of the Explorers Club. She joined the crew of the R/V Heraclitus in 1986 and has made Heraclitus and its ecological, cultural, theater and artistic projects the focus of her life. Christine was captain of the Heraclitus from 1990-1995, concentrating on coral reef and mangrove studies in Belize and elsewhere in the Caribbean, assisting in coral and fish collections for the ground-breaking Biosphere 2 project in Arizona. Currently, she and Captain Claus are co-directing the complete rebuild of the R/V Heraclitus in Roses, Spain, and will serve as Expedition Chief during its 2020-2025 Sea People Expedition to West Africa, Brazil and the Caribbean.

Manno Franca

Geospatial Intelligence Director
expert in geospatial intelligence and strategy, as well as a researcher in forest fire management in tropical regions. He worked as an advisor to the government in Brazil, where he coordinated the Department of Geospatial Intelligence and was responsible for the modelling and establishment of biological corridors and many hundreds of thousands of acres in protected areas in different biomes. During that period, he was also involved with the development of new systems to detect deforestation and platforms to make geographical information and environmental knowledge widely accessible to the public. He is the Co-¬Founder of EarthX, a new geospatial platform crafted specifically for storytelling and citizen engagement. EarthX believes that geospatial literacy and systems thinking are key to understanding our planet. Manno also acts as director, trustee and advisor to various cross-sector organisations in the UK, US, Switzerland, New Zealand, Brazil, Spain and Argentina.

Claus Tober

Captain, Research Vessel Heraclitus
Claus Tober is the captain of the Research Vessel Heraclitus and has engaged in several expeditions worldwide since 1995. He is a Director of the Institute of Ecotechnics UK and of Ecotechnics Maritime, Ltd. Claus grew up at the shores of the Baltic Sea in the North of Germany. Claus’s desire for adventure and a childhood dream of living the romantic life of an ancient mariner came true when joining the crew of an ocean-going Chinese Junk called Heraclitus, anchored off Belize City, Central America in 1992. On board Heraclitus he has collected data for coral reef and climatological studies, accompanied the ships ongoing oral history project, trained plenty new crew and avid students in seamanship, the art of navigation and the virtues of a life spent at sea. Currently he is co-managing the extensive rebuild of RV Heraclitus in Roses, Catalonia, Spain.

William Dempster

Systems Engineering Director
Director of Systems Engineering and chief engineer for the Biosphere 2 project of Space Biospheres Ventures. William (Freddy) has been the director of engineering systems for the institute since 1969. He started his career as a systems and applications programmer at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California. The programming of applications included relativistic particle physics simulation. He has assisted in all ecotechnic projects including the infamous dome at Synergia Ranch, the heraclitus ship, and the Biosphere 2. He currently still manages systems at Synergia Ranch in New Mexico.

Mark Nelson, PhD

Chairman
Dr. Mark Nelson is Chairman of the Institute of Ecotechnics, head of Wastewater Gardens International and has worked for several decades in closed ecological system research, bioregenerative space life support, ecological engineering, restoration of damaged ecosystems, desert agriculture and wastewater recycling. Dr. Nelson was a member of the eight person “biospherian” crew for the first two year Biosphere 2 closure experiment, 1991-1993.n the 1970s, he planted an organic fruit orchard at Synergia Ranch, Santa Fe NM and has helped manage its organic fruit and vegetable farm for decades. He currently resides at the Ranch and manages waste water gardens throughout the world. he is often asked to key note conferences. Click to learn how you can book him as a speaker.

Thrity Jal Vakil

Las Casas de la Selva Director
Thrity Jal Vakil serves as Director of Tropic Ventures 1000-acre Sustainable Forestry & Rainforest Enrichment Project in Puerto Rico. 3t has worked on tree-id, selective harvesting, milling, and wood-drying operations for two decades, and in 2015 co-founded Puerto Rico Hardwoods. She has led sixty Earthwatch research teams, and has observed, measured, monitored, and planted, hundreds of trees. An Associate of the Institute of Ecotechnics since 1990, 3t has hands-on experience in a range of fields: ecology, event management, arts, expeditions, and theater. In the mid 90’s she served three years as Assistant to the Expedition Chief on the RV Heraclitus, diving on remote coral reefs in the Red Sea & Indian Ocean and crossing the Atlantic and Mediterranean Oceans. 3t is Fellow of the Linnean Institute, a Fellow of the World Academy of Art & Science, and an accomplished artist.

Robert “Rio” Hahn

Director
an explorer, photographer, filmmaker, painter, author, and speaker on altered states of consciousness. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Fellow, two-term international Director, and three-term San Diego Chapter Chair of The Explorers Club. He is a co-founder, Fellow, Director, and past president of the Institute of Ecotechnics, whose research led to the Biosphere 2 Project, which he co-initiated. He participated in the design and construction of the Research Vessel Heraclitus for which he was the first licensed captain. He was Scientific Chief and overall manager for the Institute’s ethnopharmacological Amazon Expedition, following which he served as overall manager and Expedition Chief for the Around-the-Tropic World circumnavigation expedition of the Heraclitus, during which he co-produced and co-directed Journeys To Other Worlds, a series of cultural documentary films from the expedition.

Kathelin Gray

Director
a director, producer, curator, and writer. She has co-founded projects which integrate art, ecology, science and culture. These include the Research Vessel Heraclitus, Biosphere 2 closed ecological system experiment, Institute of Ecotechnics, and the October Gallery, London. She was the artistic director of Theatre of All Possibilities, which toured internationally for 18 years and served as an artistic ‘think tank’ for envisioning projects. Its successor is Theatre for the Reconstitution of Reality, a pataphysical research initiative. She also serves as a consultant to William Burroughs Communications.

Gessie Houghton

October Gallery
a writer, art-critic and videographer based in London. Graduating from Churchill College, Cambridge, he spent two years in West Africa working as an interpreter. In 1980, he moved to Japan where he taught Literature and Linguistics at two of Japan’s more prestigious universities. On his return to London, in 1994, he became Director of Special Projects at October Gallery, a central-London gallery specializing in contemporary art from around the planet. As well as writing essays, articles and catalogues he has edited a number of publications on the many international artists October Gallery represents. Since 2000, he has documented ancient traditions of dance in the Himalaya region, helping create a trove of 500 plus hours of dance footage held in the NYPL archives and available online.

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