Cassandra Thiel, PhD, is assistant professor, New York University, Grossman School of Medicine’s departments of Population Health and Ophthalmology and the Tandon School of Engineering’s Department of Civil and Urban Engineering. She is also the president/CEO of Clinically Sustainable Consulting LLC. Her research utilizes life cycle assessment and principles of industrial ecology to analyze and improve the environmental performance of medical systems, hospital design, healthcare practice and medical technologies. As a 2014–2015 Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellow, Thiel calculated the environmental footprint of cataract surgery at Aravind Eye Care System in southern India, finding that Aravind’s carbon footprint for phacoemulsification was 5% of the same surgery done in the United Kingdom.

She received her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh and Bachelor of Science from Michigan Technological University, both in civil engineering. Her graduate training was supported by the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation and a National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship.