Alexander Felson

Professor

The University of Melbourne, Elisabeth Murdoch Chair of Landscape Architecture

Expertise: landscape architect and urban ecologist, focused on coastal adaptation and ecological design

Alex Felson is at The University of Melbourne as Elisabeth Murdoch Chair of Landscape Architecture.  He was formerly  at CIRCA as the Deputy Executive Director and Director of Resilience Design.  He now serves as an affiliated staff on the Connecticut Connections Coastal Resilience Plan – a US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) National Disaster Resilience (NDR) grant. This four year science-based risk assessment and broad consultation planning initiative will produce a resilience framework for Connecticut.

Dr. Felson is a senior certified ecologist and a registered landscape architect who founded the Urban Ecology and Design Lab and runs Ecopolitan Design. Prior to joining CIRCA, he held the position of associate Professor at Yale University jointly between the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Architecture. Felson works nationally on resilience projects including in Miami and California, and continues to work on coastal resilience planning extensively for the State of Connecticut. He built bioretention gardens in Bridgeport through a community process, worked on the first resiliency plan for the State in Guilford, served as a core team member on Rebuild by Design, and recently completed the Regional Resilience Framework Plan with the Nature Conservancy. He currently serves on the SAFR Council (State Agencies Fostering Resilience) and he is collaborating on a municipal economic planning tool to evaluate and prioritize alternative scenarios for coastal adaptation. Alex holds a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolution from Rutgers University an MLA from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, and an MS in Land Resources from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.