Dr. Luis Rodríguez
As an Associate Professor of Agricultural & Biological Engineering, as well as the Associate Director for Education & Outreach at the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment (iSEE) at the University of Illinois, Dr. Luis Rodríguez integrates his expertise in food-energy-water system modeling to build resilience across communities and expand opportunities for students to design real-world sustainability solutions. In this article, Rodríguez discusses how biosystems modeling can be applied to support in-need communities, the importance of relationship building between researchers and local partners, and details a few of his ongoing projects in the biosystems space.
Key Takeaways
- From Mars to Earth: Dr. Rodríguez began his career at NASA designing zero-waste ecosystems for Mars. He now applies that same reliability and system safety to help “earth-side” communities survive and recover from natural disasters.
- Strengthening Puerto Rico: In response to Hurricane Maria, Rodríguez established a disaster relief program that sends Illinois students to Puerto Rico to work on projects like rainwater harvesting systems and plant nurseries to bolster the island’s infrastructure.
- Community-Led Science: Rodríguez uses “community science” to fill data gaps, ensuring that research is mutually beneficial and empowers locals to advocate for their own resource needs.
- Transdisciplinary Innovation: At his BioMASS lab in Illinois, Rodríguez leads students from all kinds of majors to use computational modeling to simulate costs and resource requirements of sustainable infrastructure, such as circular bioeconomies.
- Redefining Value: Rodríguez promotes “circular bioeconomies” where organic waste is processed into fuel or fertilizer, providing a baseline of resilience for communities during emergencies. He argues that the success of a system shouldn’t just be measured by profit.
Life on Mars may sound like science fiction for some, but for Dr. Luis Rodríguez, it marked the beginning stages of his career in biosystems research. He laughs, remembering his first major project after completing his PhD in Industrial and Systems Engineering and Bioresource Engineering at Rutgers University: designing reliable zero-waste ecosystems capable of supporting crop production on Mars at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
The project stemmed from his doctoral research and later evolved into future projects that secured some of the first grants he received at Illinois. “We were talking about zero waste before it was cool,” he says with a grin.
Over the years, Rodríguez’s research focus has shifted from outer space to earth-side. Upon joining the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005 as an Assistant Professor, he began to study food and agricultural system supply chains, before taking interest in projects that address the resilience of these systems in vulnerable communities, where sustainability is challenged due to limited resources.
For Rodríguez, the shift wasn’t as big as it might seem. “One of the motivating factors while I was working for NASA was to ensure that the astronauts were safe and that the systems were reliable,” he says. “When I think about disaster resilience today, I’m thinking about the same themes, though the hazards are very different.”
Now, Rodríguez channels these themes into his roles as an educator, researcher, and leader at the U. of I., driving collaborative efforts to build resilient food-water-energy systems.
Disaster Resilience in Puerto Rico
One of Rodríguez’s target communities is his native Puerto Rico, home to both his family and many of his current research efforts. The island regularly grapples with fragile infrastructure and limited access to resources in the face of repeated natural disasters. But where some see damage and hardship, Rodríguez sees an opportunity to help.
After Hurricane Maria in 2017, Rodríguez developed the UIUC Puerto Rico Disaster Relief program, bringing Illinois students on multiple service trips to Puerto Rico to collaborate with local partners on engineering projects geared towards strengthening island infrastructure.
“Our hope is that this becomes an educational opportunity for everyone involved – the staff and students of the school, other community members, as well as ourselves.”
One of Rodríguez’s long-standing partnerships is with Caras con Causa, a non-profit organization based in Cataño, Puerto Rico. Together, they have installed a rainwater harvesting and processing system at a local charter school, alongside a plant nursery that supports ecological restoration efforts in the area.
Conducting such projects in a rural setting is not without its fair share of challenges. “We want to understand how much water we’re actually offsetting compared to municipal use, and what the water quality looks like throughout the system,” he says. “It’s a hot environment, with no real winter, so maintenance also becomes a concern. Are the irrigation nozzles staying clear? Are the pipes growing algae?”
Rodríguez sees promise in these questions. “Our hope is that this becomes an educational opportunity for everyone involved – the staff and students of the school, other community members, as well as ourselves.”
The Importance of Relationship Building
In pursuit of sustainable solutions for disadvantaged communities, Rodríguez’s reach has expanded beyond Puerto Rico. In June of 2025, he and his collaborators gathered in Jamaica for a workshop focused on building equitable disaster resilience. The event brought together a mix of academics and community partners from rural areas all across the Americas, including Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and the Navajo Nation.
“When we’re doing research that might link to their community, they are the experts of their community and their lived experience there. That’s where community science plays a crucial role.”
The purpose of that meeting was to begin creating a collaborative network where communities could work together to solve common challenges surrounding disaster resilience. “We found that disasters are defined differently depending on who you are and who you’re talking to,” Rodríguez says. “But we also found some commonalities.”
Rodríguez explains that in Trinidad and Tobago, which lies farther southeast than where most hurricanes make landfall, the greater concern is water scarcity. A similar challenge exists for the Navajo Nation, located in the Southwestern United States, where water scarcity and wildfire are linked to drought.
For Rodríguez, addressing these issues starts on the community level. He believes that a strong partnership with local organizations and community leaders is imperative to fill critical data gaps and understand their urgent needs.
“When we’re doing research that might link to their community, they are the experts of their community and their lived experience there,” Rodríguez says. But in many regions, he notes, reliable data is simply missing. “That’s where community science plays a crucial role. If community members are interested in being a part of that process, then we can work with them to generate that data.”
Rodríguez emphasizes that this process must be mutually beneficial. “If they become partners, they need to benefit like partners,” he says. To him, that means returning the practical and educational benefits of his research back to community members.
Rodríguez believes that helping community members better understand what the data means for them can empower them to advocate more effectively for their own communities.
“We open ourselves to solve problems that arise at the interfaces between our recognized disciplinary perspectives.”
On-Campus Efforts
While Rodríguez’s projects rely heavily on community partnerships and on-the-ground fieldwork, much of the work also unfolds back on campus at Illinois, in Rodríguez’s BioMASS lab (Laboratory for Biological Modeling Analysis and Systems Simulation).
There, his team of students are well equipped to tackle the technical challenges of these projects, drawing from backgrounds in engineering, informatics, geography, and geographic information systems (GIS).
“This is a transdisciplinary research effort.” Rodríguez says. “My students bring different strengths. We open ourselves to solve problems that arise at the interfaces between our recognized disciplinary perspectives.” This diversity of expertise allows the BioMASS lab to use a number of different computational models to reach research goals.
When asked about the rise of AI and the use of new modeling technologies at the BioMASS lab, Rodríguez smiles. “For some of us, it’s not that new. We were using early versions of all these algorithms back when I was in grad school,” he says. What has changed, he explains, is public perception. “At that time, people weren’t willing to trust the information that was being generated. It’s different now.”
The advancements in computational modeling have allowed for more precise simulations and estimates in the biosystems discipline. “It has been tremendously beneficial,” Rodríguez says. “We’re not using generative models just yet, but we are thinking about how to recast our questions so that we can leverage them. Otherwise we might miss an opportunity.”
These models help Rodríguez’s team assess a number of different aspects of building sustainability-driven infrastructure, from resource requirements to potential costs.
Balancing Profit and Purpose
Assessing the feasibility of these solutions requires understanding both technical and economic realities. Rodríguez notes that money is often one of the bigger obstacles of his work. However, he challenges the assumption that only large-scale, high-profit systems can succeed in this space, believing that even small changes can be a step in the right direction.
“If we produce a fuel with lower quality feedstock, and that fuel can be used to keep the community’s wastewater processing plant open in the case of an emergency, that is an advantage.”
Rodríguez believes that community-oriented approaches help identify potentially viable systems. “When we talk about capturing and processing organic waste, that becomes new infrastructure,” he says. “Water treatment plants already operate at low or even negative returns, but people pay to keep them going. So if a community is very committed to sustainability, they may be willing to adopt a similar model for organic waste.”
“I know we’re going to learn a lot along the way. But then hopefully we can also change the baseline for how these issues are handled in the future.”
Looking Ahead
Rodríguez’s team has already seen tangible results from their systems modeling work. A few years ago, they published a study on food waste recollection systems in Illinois that analyzed the potential return on investment for processing organic waste into usable products. Recently, they expanded that work to estimate food waste in Puerto Rico.
“Puerto Rico produces a lot of excess waste that could become part of a circular bioeconomy,” he says. “We can process that organic matter into renewable fuel, energy, or even soil amendments that help catalyze the local food and agriculture economy.”
Still, Rodríguez feels he is far from the finish line, recognizing the complexity of his work. His long term vision involves the sustained collaboration between students, institutions, and community partners. “This isn’t a five year project,” he says. “It’s much longer than that.”
By linking biosystems research and community science, Rodríguez hopes that he can change how disaster resilience is approached across vulnerable communities. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he says. “I know we’re going to learn a lot along the way. But then hopefully we can also change the baseline for how these issues are handled in the future.”
During the course of this writing, Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica, causing severe damage to several communities, including those that Dr. Rodríguez and his team have been actively working with, such as the Petersfield and Galloway communities in Westmoreland Parish. Disaster relief efforts for impacted communities have been organized by Rodríguez’s collaborators AllPeopleBeHappy.
In response to the disaster, Dr. Rodríguez is helping to organize teams to provide on-the-ground support to Jamaican communities as emergency conditions begin to stabilize. These teams aim to bring together individuals that have: (1) connections and local knowledge of Jamaica, (2) experience mobilizing resources and assembling equipment on-site, or (3) insights from Puerto Rico’s recovery following Hurricane Maria. Those interested in contributing expertise or support are encouraged to reach out to Dr. Rodríguez here.
Learn More and Get Involved
Undergraduate or graduate student interested in Dr. Rodríguez’s disaster resilience courses at UIUC can find more information about ETMA 452: Design and Management for Disaster Resilience and ABE 452: Engineering for Disaster Resilience.
Contact the Office of Data Science Research if you’re aware of other people or resources we could feature here. ODSR is a campuswide convening organization that facilitates collaborations, resource sharing, and public engagement focused on data science research activities at the University of Illinois.