Laura Schmitt Olabisi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability and the Environmental Science and Policy Program at Michigan State University. She works directly with stakeholders, using participatory model-building techniques to foster adaptive learning about the dynamics of coupled human-natural systems, and to integrate stakeholder and academic knowledge.

Currently, she is working in West Africa on climate change adaptation, food security, and development projects funded by NSF and USAID; and in Detroit and Flint, Michigan, on food security and urban agriculture systems. She is also involved in an NSF-funded workshop series at the Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center on participatory modeling.

Laura holds a doctoral degree in Systems Ecology from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and a B.Sc. in Environmental Science from Brown University.  During her 2016-17 sabbatical at RAND as a visiting scholar, she is working on stakeholder engagement and decision-making under uncertainty in environmental contexts.