company, Todd has developed his own later-generation wastewater treatment systems, under the name "Eco-machines". As of 2014, John Todd Ecological Design registered the trademark for the term "Eco-machines". Todd's son, Jonathan Todd, is the president of John Todd Ecological Design. University of Vermont Todd taught at the University of Vermont as a guest lecturer beginning in 1997. He became a research professor in 1999. He is now a research professor emeritus and distinguished lecturer. Ecological design Todd and his colleagues were some of the first people to actually create miniature ecosystems, largely self-perpetuating, which applied ecological principles to address human needs. Todd's approach is one of biomimicry, in which a complex natural ecosystem such as a marsh is studied, recreated and adapted. Learning from the natural system, the ecological designer combines micro-organisms, fish, and plants into a functionally complex system that is capable of carrying out tasks such as bioremediation and phytoremediation. Todd emphasized the importance of establishing an ecosystem with a large number of diverse species and then allowing it to "settle" to a stable state, a process that could take weeks, months, or even years. He recommended seeding the ecosystem with local species, ones that had already demonstrated an ability to withstand conditions in the target environment. He sought to create systems that were capable of self-organizing and displaying emergent properties. Such systems are of necessity complex and cannot be well understood in terms of simple reductionism. Todd has applied these ideas in various ways, to create types of applications including "bioshelters" or "arks", "ecological treatment systems" (ETS), "advanced ecologically engineered systems" (AEES) "living machines", and "eco-machines". Water This work has resulted in innovative new approaches to processing wastewater and sewage. Todd and colleagues developed what they called "living machines". These systems are ecologically engineered technologies developed to restore, conserve, or remediate polluted water, by replicating and accelerating the natural purification processes of streams, ponds and marshes. In practical application, a living machine is a self-contained treatment system designed to treat a specific waste stream using the principles of ecological engineering. It does this by creating diverse communities of bacteria and other microorganisms, algae, plants, trees, snails, fish and other living creatures in a series of tanks. The EPA has concluded that this approach is appropriate to the treatment of municipal and some industrial types of wastewater, and that it can be competitive in cost compared to more