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Connecting the Dots 2015

The Climate, Energy, Food, and Water Nexus

Event Details:

Friday, April 17, 2015

Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center
326 Galvez St, Stanford
Friday, April 17, 2015 | 12:30pm - 6:30pm

IN CELEBRATION OF EARTH DAY, each year Stanford experts from a range of disciplines meet to discuss the interconnections and interactions among humanity's needs for and use of food, energy, water and the effect they have on climate and conflict. These experts illustrated and evaluated some of the ways in which decisions in one resource area can lead to trade-offs or co-benefits in others, and discussed opportunities to make decisions that can have positive benefits in one area while avoiding negative or unintended consequences in other areas. This year, in celebration of our 5th anniversary of Connecting the Dots, we returned to the food nexus.

Speakers

Karen Ross
KEYNOTE
Secretary of California Department of Food and Agriculture

Stacey Bent, TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy, Chemical Engineering

Rosamond Naylor, Center on Food Security and the Environment, Earth System Science

David Lobell, Center on Food Security and the Environment, Earth System Science

Marshall Burke, Environmental Earth System Science, FSE Center on Food Security and the Environment

Steve Luby, Stanford Medicine, Woods Institute for the Environment

Scott Rozelle, Rural Education Action Program, Freeman Spogli Institute

Pam Matson, Dean of the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences

Break-out Sessions

Christopher Seifert, Graduate Student, Environmental Earth System Science

Rebecca Gilsdorf, PhD Candidate, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Angela Harris, PhD Candidate, Civil & Environmental Engineering

William Chapman, Graduate Student, CEE-Atmosphere and Energy

Priya Fielding-Singh, PhD Candidate, Sociology

Maria Deloso, Coterminal B.S./M.A. Candidate, Earth System Program

Alexandra Heeney, PhD Candidate, Management Science & Engineering

In Celebration of Earth Day, this 5th annual Connecting the Dots symposium focused on food. Engage in a discussion of the interconnections between the global food system and humanity's need for natural resources, education and security. Hear experts examine the ways in which decisions in one resource area can lead to trade-offs or co-benefits in others.

View the archived webcast here:
https://livestream.com/accounts/7425500/events/3912188

This webcast was presented by the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy; The Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE)Precourt Institute for EnergyStanford Woods Institute for the EnvironmentSchool of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and the Stanford Alumni Association.

Speaker Bios

Stacey Bent

TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy, Chemical Engineering, PIE

Stacey F. Bent is the Jagdeep and Roshni Singh Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, where she is appointed Professor of Chemical Engineering and Professor, by courtesy, of Chemistry, of Materials Science and Engineering, and of Electrical Engineering. Professor Bent serves as the Director of the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy. She is also the co-Director of the Center on Nanostructuring for Efficient Energy Conversion, a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center and a senior fellow in the Precourt Institute of Energy. Professor Bent obtained her B.S. degree in chemical engineering from UC Berkeley and her Ph.D. degree in chemistry from Stanford. After carrying out postdoctoral work at AT&T Bell Laboratories, she joined the faculty of the Chemistry Department at New York University. She moved to Stanford University in 1998. Professor Bent’s research is focused on understanding surface and interfacial chemistry and materials synthesis, and applying this knowledge to a range of problems in sustainable energy, semiconductor processing, and nanotechnology. Her group currently studies new materials and processes for electronics, solar cells and solar fuels, and catalysts. As the Director of the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy, Professor Bent oversees the Center’s mission to make human electricity and transportation systems more sustainable for the long term. The Center also aims to educate tomorrow’s energy leaders, through outreach events, course grants, and summer internship programs.


Karen Ross

Secretary of California Department of Food and Agriculture

Karen Ross was appointed Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture on January 12, 2011 by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. Secretary Ross has deep leadership experience in agricultural issues nationally, internationally, and here in California. Prior to joining CDFA, Secretary Ross was chief of staff for U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a position she accepted in 2009. Before her time at the United States Department of Agriculture, Secretary Ross served more than thirteen years as President of the California Association of Winegrape Growers (CAWG), based in Sacramento. During that same period she served as the Executive Director of Winegrape Growers of America, a coalition of state winegrower organizations, and as Executive Director of the California Wine Grape Growers Foundation, which sponsors scholarships for the children of vineyard employees. Among Secretary Ross’ many achievements at CAWG was the creation of the nationally-recognized Sustainable Winegrowing Program, which assists wine grape growers in maintaining the long-term viability of agricultural lands and encourages them to provide leadership in protecting the environment, conserving natural resources, and enhancing their local communities.


Rosamond Naylor

Center on Food Security and the Environment, EESS, Woods, FSI

Rosamond Naylor is the Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment, William Wrigley Professor in Earth Science, the William Wrigley Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and Associate Professor of Economics (by courtesy) at Stanford University. She received her B.A. in Economics and Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado, her M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics, and her Ph.D. in applied economics from Stanford University. Her research focuses on economic and biophysical dimensions of food security and environmental impacts of crop and animal production. She has been involved in many field-level research projects around the world and has published widely on issues related to intensive crop production, aquaculture and livestock systems, biofuels, climate change, food price volatility, and food policy analysis. At Stanford, Naylor teaches courses on the World Food Economy, Human-Environment Interactions, and Sustainable Agriculture. Naylor currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Beijer Institute in Stockholm, is a Science Advisor for United Nation's Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon's initiative on Sustainable Development (Sustainable Agriculture section), and trustee of The Nature Conservancy California Chapter. Additionally, she serves on the editorial board of the journals Global Food Security and Journal on Food Security.


David Lobell

Center on Food Security and the Environment, EESS, Woods, FSI

David Lobell is an Associate Professor in Environmental Earth System Science and Deputy Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University. His research focuses on identifying opportunities to raise crop yields in major agricultural regions, with a particular emphasis on adaptation to climate change. His current projects span Africa, South Asia, Mexico, and the United States, and involve a range of tools including remote sensing, GIS, and crop and climate models. Lobell's work is motivated by questions such as: What investments are most effective at raising global crop yields, in order to increase food production without expansion of agricultural lands? Will yield gains keep pace with global demand for crop products, given current levels of investment? And, what direct or indirect effects will efforts to raise crop productivity have on other components of the Earth System, such as climate? Answering these questions requires an understanding of the complex factors that limit crop yields throughout the world, and the links between agriculture and the broader Earth System. Prior to his current appointment, Dr. Lobell was a Senior Research Scholar at FSE from 2008-2009, and a Lawrence Post-doctoral Fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 2005-2007. He received a PhD in Geological and Environmental Sciences from Stanford University in 2005, and a Sc.B. in Applied Mathematics, Magna Cum Laude from Brown University in 2000.


Marshall Burke

Environmental Earth System Science, FSE

Marshall Burke is Center Fellow at the Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSI), and Assistant Professor of Environmental Earth System Science. He received his BA in International Relations from Stanford in 2003, and his PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from Berkeley in 2014. His research focuses on understanding how changes in environmental conditions affect a range of social and economic outcomes, and on understanding the causes and consequences of rural productivity improvements. He has authored over 20 published papers, which have appeared in both economics and science journals, including Science, PNAS, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Economic Journal, and which have been cited over 2900 times.


Stephen Luby

Stanford Medicine, Woods, FSI

Stephen Luby is Senior Fellow at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment; Sr. Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Research Deputy Director for the Stanford University Center for Innovation in Global Health; and Professor of Medicine, Infectious Diseases. Dr. Luby earned his MD degree from the University of Texas--Southwestern Medical School at Dallas. Previously, Dr. Luby directed research for the Centre for Communicable Diseases at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He conducted research and taught epidemiology at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, and worked as an epidemiologist in the Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Luby is best known for his work demonstrating the impact of hand-washing on disease reduction in low-income countries, characterizing the epidemiology of Nipah virus transmission in Bangladesh, and explicating the importance of unsafe injections in the transmission of hepatitis C in low-income countries. His research focuses on developing practical solutions to environmental problems that directly impact human health in low-income countries. He works primarily in Bangladesh. His ongoing projects include 1) assessing the health impact of strategies to improve water, sanitation and hygiene with particular attention to interventions that are applicable at scale; 2) reducing the adverse environmental and health consequences of brick manufacturing in Bangladesh; 3) reducing the exposure to lead among residents of rural Bangladesh; and 4) characterizing and preventing zoonotic disease transmission especially of henipa and influenza viruses.


Scott Rozelle

Rural Education Action Program, FSI, FSE, SIEPR

Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of the Rural Education Action Program in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He received his BS from the University of California, Berkeley, and his MS and PhD from Cornell University. Previously, Rozelle was a professor at the University of California, Davis and an assistant professor in Stanford’s Food Research Institute and department of economics. His research focuses almost exclusively on China and is concerned with: agricultural policy, including the supply, demand, and trade in agricultural projects; the emergence and evolution of markets and other economic institutions in transition and their implications for equity and efficiency; and the economics of poverty and inequality, with an emphasis on rural education, health and nutrition. Rozelle's papers have been published in top academic journals, including Science, Nature, American Economic Review, and the Journal of Economic Literature. He is fluent in Chinese and has established a research program in which he has close working ties with several Chinese collaborators and policymakers. In recognition of his outstanding achievements, Rozelle has received numerous honors and awards, including the Friendship Award in 2008, the highest award given to a non-Chinese by the Premier; and the National Science and Technology Collaboration Award in 2009 for scientific achievement in collaborative research.

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