Join leading experts at the forefront of virology, vaccine research, and epidemiology for a two-day event in New York City on May 21-22, 2025. The New York Academy of Sciences invites you to “Vaccines and Therapies for Chronic Viral Diseases,” where top basic and translational scientists, clinical investigators, and regulators will explore how the most current research on chronic viral infections can be leveraged for transformative pharmacologic advances to battle chronic viruses and virus-associated diseases.
Chronic viral infections pose a significant threat to global health, encompassing viruses linked to serious diseases like human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), and various herpes viruses. With over 290 million people globally infected with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) and approximately 1.2 million who die annually from acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), new research into vaccines and therapies is essential.
Participate in this exciting conference to explore recent progress and remaining obstacles for transformative therapeutics for chronic viral diseases. This is a unique opportunity to engage with renowned experts, uncover groundbreaking studies, and discuss innovative therapeutic strategies. Don’t miss out on this chance to be part of the conversation.
Sponsors
Presented By
The New York Academy of Sciences Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Discussion Group
Sponsored By
Lead Supporter: Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Discussion Group
Inclusion, in its broadest sense, refers to the practice of ensuring that all individuals are respected, valued, and supported within a community or society, regardless of their differences. Each individual should feel confident and comfortable being their authentic selves without fear of judgment or retaliation.
But what does inclusion look like in the context of STEM fields? What are some barriers to inclusion in STEM? And what unique potential does fostering a culture of inclusion have on promoting social justice and driving innovative solutions to our society’s problems? Explore the answers to these questions and learn more at the first session of our ‘Inclusion in STEM’ series, featuring Alfred M. Mays, Chief Diversity Officer and Strategist and Senior Program Officer for Diversity and Education at the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
About the Series
The Inclusion in STEM series delves into a few of the many topics that are essential for actively cultivating a culture of inclusion in STEM, including defining inclusion, promoting inclusive pipelines through mentorship, finding solidarity and power through joining affinity groups, being an inclusive leader, and communicating research in a way that centers inclusion, equity, and intersectionality. Learn more about the series and explore the full lineup of events.
Speaker
Alfred M. Mays currently serves as the Chief Diversity Officer and Strategist for Science Education and Diversity at Burroughs Wellcome Fund where he directs a portfolio of competitive and strategic grant programs. Prior to Alfred assuming this role, he served as an independent consultant with a service delivery that included strategic planning, project incubation, design, and implementation. Alfred has served as an enabler within several education initiatives to include the Collaborative Project, a 21st Century Program that was supported by the North Carolina General Assembly, staff advisor to North Carolina’s eLearning Commission, Director of Special Projects at the University of North Carolina – Office of the President, and regional director for the North Carolina Model Teacher Education Consortium. Alfred enjoys facilitating youth leadership and empowerment activities and serves on the Board of Directors for several organizations. He has been recognized for his contributions with many organizational successes to include Government Wide Best Practices.
Sponsor
Thought Partner
Pricing
Member: Free
Nonmember: $10.00
By attending this session, you will receive an exclusive 50% discount for upcoming events in the series.
Are you interested in building a career in STEM? Join The New York Academy of Sciences for an exciting monthly online event series designed to explore the vast opportunities within STEM fields. This series offers unique access to experts across industries.
Each session features guest speakers from distinguished organizations, including Noven Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer, and more. Gain invaluable insights into their career journeys, the roles they hold today, and the innovative work they do.
Engage in live Q&A sessions to ask questions that will help shape your own career path. Whether actively pursuing a STEM career or simply exploring possibilities, this event series provides the tools and knowledge you need to succeed.
This series is open to all, regardless of age or background, and is the perfect opportunity to network and learn. Don’t miss your chance to connect with leading STEM professionals and take the next step in your career journey!
Dr. Lev Sviridov, joined the Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College in 2013 as an Acting Director. Following a national search, Dr. Sviridov was appointed Director in 2014. He received a B.S. degree in Chemistry from The City College of New York and a D.Phil degree in Inorganic Chemistry from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to his service as Acting Director, Dr. Sviridov served as a Senior Research Associate at the CUNY Energy Institute, where his research led to the founding of Urban Electric Power, a non-lithium energy storage company based in Pearl River, New York. In addition to his responsibilities, he serves as Vice Chair of Human Rights First and on the selection panel for the Sloan Award for Teaching of Math and Science in New York City Public Schools, and as Chair of the Development Committee for the Foundation for City College.
Pricing
Member: Free
Nonmember: $10.00
By attending this session, you will receive an exclusive 50% discount for upcoming events in the series.
Scientists, engineers, educators, policymakers, and the public must work together to ensure the United States remains globally competitive.
Published September 23, 2024
By Nick Fetty Digital Content Manager
Photo by Nick Fetty/The New York Academy of Sciences.
A panel of experts took a deep dive into science education, policy, economics, and more during the United States of Science event, hosted by The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) and the Science & Technology Action Committee (STAC) on September 16, 2024.
From left: Keith Yamamoto, PhD,; Mary Woolley; Jo Craven McGinty; Nicholas Dirks; and Darío Gil, PhD. Photo by Nick Fetty/The New York Academy of Sciences.
Moderator Jo Craven McGinty, science bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, introduced the discussion by citing STAC’s State of Science Report in which more than 75 percent of respondents indicated that the United States is losing, or has lost, the competition to lead the world in science and technology. Furthermore, 60 percent predicted that in six years, China will be the leader.
She posed the question to Keith Yamamoto, PhD, vice chancellor for Science Policy and Strategy at the University of California San Francisco and co-chair of STAC if these perceptions reflect reality.
“The results reflect the fact that there’s been an erosion of trust in science. A lack of understanding of the societal impact of science,” said Dr. Yamamoto, calling it “disappointing.”
Darío Gil, PhD, IBM Senior Vice President and Director of Research, added that in terms of “absolute dollars spent,” the United States continues to lead the way. While the U.S. leads in funding, Dr. Gil did acknowledge that for the first time, the U.S. has been surpassed by China for the number of PhDs awarded, patents issued, and papers published.
Panelist Darío Gil, PhD (right). Photo by Nick Fetty/The New York Academy of Sciences.
Areas of Strength, Room for Growth
“We have extraordinary strengths across the science and engineering enterprise, but we have areas of significant concern as well,” said Dr. Gil, who also serves on the Academy’s Board of Governors and the Executive Board for the International Science Reserve.
Craven McGinty, then shifted the focus to the potential cause of this perceived diminishment of science in the U.S. She asked Mary Woolley, president of Research!America and co-chair of STAC, whether it’s complacency on the part of Americans, or if the nature of competition has changed. Woolley stated that it’s a combination of the two.
“We’re taking science and technology for granted, and progress for granted, and we have for many years,” said Woolley. She added that while government officials are cutting budgets each year with little foresight to the future, private industry is leading the way.
Panelist Mary Woolley. Photo by Nick Fetty/The New York Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Gil said it’s important to understand the historical context to better comprehend how the nature of the competition has changed in recent years. He cited that 20 years ago the United States spent $300 billion annually in research and development. One-third came from the federal government, while the remainder came from the business sector. Fast forward 20 years, that number rises to $800 billion annually with $600 billion from the business sector.
Another contributing factor, according to Dr. Gil, is that the international scene has become more competitive as other countries have effectively imitated the success of U.S. institution building. He said China is perhaps the greatest example of this success.
The Role of Higher Education in Research
Nicholas Dirks, president and CEO of the Academy, offered an education perspective. Prior to his role at the Academy, Dirks spent his career in higher education, first on faculty and later in administration. He said that historically, higher education has been reliant on the model set up by 20th century governmental investments in science.
This includes research funded by agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). This funding framework was made possible because of the “efflorescence of great research universities,” according to Dirks, that occurred in the U.S. in the early 20th century, particularly after World War II.
“I worry that if you both look at basic research, but even applied research that’s done within the context of a university where the incentives are not necessarily short-term incentives around building usable products or medicines, you begin to lose the real dynamism that underlies the whole system of research in this country,” Dirks cautioned.
The Importance of Fundamental Research
Keith Yamamoto, PhD. Photo by Nick Fetty/The New York Academy of Sciences.
Electrical engineer Vannevar Bush was the nation’s first presidential science advisor, serving in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. When World War II ended, the president asked Bush about the role the federal government should continue to play in supporting science. In his report, Science —The Endless Frontier, Bush stated that the federal government should continue to support scientific advancement.
“[According to the report], the way that [the federal government] should stay involved is to support fundamental research, basic research, in universities and medical schools. And to support the training of the next generation of scientists,” said Dr. Yamamoto. “Which is really still the framework for federal science policy in this country.”
This fundamental research is crucial to support, according to Dr. Yamamoto, because through further investigation, scientists can discover practical applications for something that started as novel research. While this is important in theory, Dr. Yamamoto was critical that a commitment to this practice from the federal government has not been thoroughly maintained.
“The peak in federal research for science and technology in this country was reached in 1964, and it’s been sort of dribbling down ever since, from 1.9 percent to under 0.7 percent of GDP,” stated Dr. Yamamoto. He added that scientific research is “now a multisector enterprise that, in order to succeed, is going to need support across the board.”
The United States as a World Leader
From left: Keith Yamamoto, PhD,; Mary Woolley; Jo Craven McGinty; Nicholas Dirks, PhD; and Darío Gil, PhD. Photo by Nick Fetty/The New York Academy of Sciences.
Building off Dr. Yamamoto’s GDP statistics, moderator Craven McGinty went deeper into the data. She cited that microchip production in the U.S., has declined from 37 percent 30 years ago, to 12 percent today. In particular, demand “has grown exponentially in the last decade.” Furthermore, the 2023 International Student Assessment, which evaluates the academic performance of 15-year-old students, ranked the U.S. 28th out of 37 participating countries in math, 12th in science, and 6th in reading. She then asked the panelists how we got to this point.
Dr. Gil explained the complexities of this issue from an economic standpoint. He indicated that recent changes in globalization and supply chains are part of the reason the U.S. lost its status as a major manufacturer of microchips. Dirks then weighed in. While his professional career has been in higher education, he acknowledges that the issue must be addressed at the K-12 level for American students.
“We are not producing enough K through 12 students with requisite STEM skills to work at the highest level of what we’re going to need for the workforce of the future,” Dirks said. He expressed concern about neglecting STEM skill development in American K-12 schools and overly relying on international students to pursue STEM degrees from American universities.
Moderator Jo Craven McGinty. Photo by Nick Fetty/The New York Academy of Sciences.
Taking Action
Woolley emphasized the pervasiveness of these issues. She said it isn’t just scientists and industry leaders who have expressed concern about the strength of the STEM pipeline. It’s also the broader public, such as parents.
She cited data from STAC, which found that people generally gave low rankings when assessing the quality of education in their state. However, when asked about areas that they value most in their state, education ranks high. With K-12 education in the U.S. being largely unfederated, she suggests that action at the local policy level can be the catalyst to make these necessary changes.
“There’s plenty of room for not only improvement but figuring out what each individual already in the science community, or associated with it, universities for example, what can you do?” Wooley asked. “Can you personally encourage a science-trained friend to run for the local school board? Think of the difference that would make.”
The New York Academy of Sciences has been at the forefront of machine learning and artificial intelligence since hosting the first Machine Learning Symposium nearly two decades ago.
Published September 16, 2024
By Nick Fetty Digital Content Manager
In today’s digital age, an abundance of reliable data is readily available at our fingertips. This is, in part, because of significant advances in the field of machine learning in recent years.
The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) has long played a role in advancing research in this subfield of artificial intelligence. In machine learning, researchers develop mathematical algorithms that extract knowledge from specific data sets. The machine then “learns” from the data in an iterative fashion that enables predictions to be made. It has a wide range of disparate practical applications from natural language processing and search engine function to stock market analysis and medical diagnosis.
The first Machine Learning Symposium was hosted by the Academy in 2006. Collaborators included experts from Google, Rutgers University, Columbia University, and NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.
Continuing a Proud Tradition
This proud tradition will continue when the Academy hosts the 15th annual Machine Learning Symposium at the New York Academy of Medicine (1216 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10029) on October 18, 2024. This year’s keynote speakers include:
Pin-Yu Chen, PhD, IBM Research: Dr. Chen’s recent research focuses on adversarial machine learning of neural networks for robustness and safety. His long-term research vision is to build trustworthy machine learning systems.
Furong Huang, PhD, University of Maryland: Dr. Huang works on statistical and trustworthy machine learning, foundation models and reinforcement learning, with specialization in domain adaptation, algorithmic robustness, and fairness.
Daniel Russo, PhD, Columbia University: Dr. Russo’s research lies at the intersection of statistical machine learning and online decision making, mostly falling under the broad umbrella of reinforcement learning.
Jon Schneider, PhD, Google Research New York: Dr. Schneider’s primary research interests include problems in online learning, game theory, and convex optimization/geometry. His recent work focuses on designing strategically robust algorithms for learning in game-theoretic environments.
The symposium’s primary goal has always been to develop an active community of machine learning scientists. This includes experts from academic, government, and industrial institutions who can exchange ideas in a neutral setting.
Graduate students and representatives from tech startups will also deliver a series of “Spotlight Talks.” Others will share their research during an interactive poster session.
Promoting Impactful Machine Learning Applications
Over its history, the symposium has highlighted several mainstream machine learning applications. This includes simulation, learning and optimization techniques for IBM Watson‘s Jeopardy! game strategies, the role big data played in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, and a trainable vision system for off-road mobile robots.
Corinna Cortes, PhD, VP of Google Research, Mehryar Mohri, PhD, Professor at NYU and a Research Director at Google Research, and Tony Jebara, PhD, VP of Engineering and Head of Machine Learning at Spotify, have been involved since the event’s inception. They continue to guide the event’s programming through their roles on the Scientific Organizing Committee. This year’s sponsors include Google Research and Cubist Systematic Strategies.
From metabolic reprogramming in cancer cells to creating nucleotide imbalances. These experts are advancing the field of medical research and cancer treatment.
Published August 6, 2024
By Megan Prescott, PhD Program Manager for Life Sciences
What causes a normal cell to become a cancer cell? How do cancer cells cooperate to form a tumor? How can we interrupt these processes to inhibit cancer growth? Can nutrients directly modulate disease progression and therapeutic response?
These and related questions were the focus of a conference held on April 17, 2024. The conference was presented by The New York Academy of Sciences and NYU Langone Health. The program held at the NYU Medical Center, included presentations by world renowned researchers in the field of cancer metabolism. The goal was to understand how these findings can be translated into therapies that will impact the lives of patients.
Metabolic pathways represent a powerful, yet underappreciated set of therapeutic targets for cancer. They play a crucial role in tumorigenesis, the transformation of normal cells into cancerous ones. Oncogenic mutations may alter these metabolic pathways, enabling cells to extract energy from their surroundings. Additionally, they manipulate signaling pathways to drive tumor development and advancement.
Mitochondrial Adaptations and Signaling in Tumors
Navdeep Chandel, PhD. Photo by Nick Fetty/The New York Academy of Sciences
Opening speaker, Navdeep Chandel, PhD, David W. Cugell, MD Professor at Northwestern University, described how metabolic reprogramming in cancer cells is directly triggered by oncogenes. Some of the metabolic genes important for oncogenesis include those found in the electron transport chain (ETC) of mitochondria.
Since mitochondria are a biosynthetic and bioenergetic hub inside of cells, many types of cancer cells, which proliferate quickly and have high energy demands, rely heavily on mitochondria for their survival. Electron transport chain function is responsible for providing metabolites linked to the tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA). This provides the building blocks for cell proliferation. Dr. Chandel has shown that the widely used anti-diabetic drug metformin has anti-tumor effects through inhibition of Mitochondrial Complex I of the ETC within cancer cells.
Immune-dependent attenuation of tumor growth was seen in work from Pere Puigserver, PhD. Dr. Puigserver is a professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Mitochondrial Complex I inhibition in tumors triggered by deletion of the subunit Ndufs4, increases the activation status of CD8+ T Cells and Natural Killer cells within the tumor environment. This finding has potential implications in the field of immunotherapy.
Oxygen, Iron, and Vitamins in the Tumor Microenvironment
Electron Transfer Reactions in the mitochondria are facilitated by iron-sulfur containing proteins. Isha Jain, PhD, assistant professor in biochemistry and biophysics in the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, showed how these proteins are damaged in high oxygen (hyperoxic) conditions. While researchers have studied the detrimental effects of low oxygen on the body for a long time, Dr. Jain’s work focuses on discovering why too much oxygen is toxic in some cases.
“We found that certain proteins that contain iron, basically rust in high oxygen, and that’s why things go wrong,” she explained. Her work opens the question of whether treatments that can be developed to protect or repair these proteins.
Richard Possemato, PhD Photo by Nick Fetty/The New York Academy of Sciences
Research from Richard Possemato, PhD, associate professor in pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, showed that iron-sulfur clusters are important for tumor growth in breast cancer. DNA Polymerase Epsilon (POLE) contains an iron-sulfur cluster, and inhibition of POLE by disrupting its iron-sulfur cluster eradicates tumors in a mouse model of triple negative breast cancer. Furthermore, tumor eradication by this method induces adaptive immunity, and researchers were unable to grow tumors in these mice again.
Recent work has emphasized that the stressful conditions of the tumor microenvironment. Parts of the tumor periodically experience limited availability of primary nutrients and oxygen. This also affects the metabolism of cancer cells. Cell proliferation, the hallmark of cancer, is metabolically demanding. It requires energy and cellular ‘building blocks’ in the form of amino acids for proteins, fatty acids for lipids, and nucleotides for DNA and RNA.
How Cells Rewire Their Metabolism
Gerta Hoxhaj, PhD, assistant professor in the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, described how cells rewire their metabolism to fuel the growth and survival of cancer cells. Cells need a constant supply of nucleotides to grow, proliferate, and function.
Cells can either get their supply of purine nucleotides from simple molecules like amino acids by de novo synthesis or can recover purines from the breakdown of DNA and RNA through the salvage pathway. While de novo synthesis and salvage pathways contribute similarly to purine pools in tumors, the salvage pathway is critical for tumor growth in mouse models of liver cancer, among others.
Research from Celeste Simon, PhD, the Arthur H. Rubenstein, MBBCh Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, demonstrates that metabolic crosstalk is also important in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC), the second leading cause of cancer related death in 2023. Fibroblasts help PDAC cells survive by supplying these tumor cells with unsaturated fatty acids for the maintenance of lipid homeostasis in low oxygen (hypoxic) and nutrient-poor environments. Finding drugs to disrupt this cross-talk could be a novel metabolic target in PDAC treatment.
Cancer Cell Intrinsic and Extrinsic Determinants of Tumor Metabolism
The tumor microenvironment of PDAC has abundant fibroblasts of different lineages and functions according to Mara Sherman, PhD, head of the Mara Sherman lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. “We identified one lineage that promotes pancreatic cancer metastasis and seems to do so along nerves,” she said.
Lydia Finley, PhD, Geoffrey Beene Junior Faculty Chair, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Dafna Bar-Sagi, PhD, Executive Vice President and Vice Dean for Science, Chief Scientific Officer, NYU Langone Health; Melanie Brickman Borchard, PhD, Director of Life Sciences Conferences for the Academy; Alec Kimmelman, MD, PhD, Director, Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center, NYU Langone Health; Megan Prescott, PhD, Program Manager of Life Sciences for the Academy; Costas Lyssiotis, PhD, Maisel Research Professor of Oncology, University of Michigan; and Steven Gross, PhD, Professor of Pharmacology, Weill Cornell Medical College.
Social interactions between cancer cells, such as competition and cooperation, is an interest of Carlos Carmona-Fontaine, PhD, associate professor of biology at NYU. “The key currency for this cell-cell interaction is nutrients and other metabolites including oxygen,” he noted. Specifically, his presentation asked how amino acids become cooperative goods in low oxygen environments.
Amino acid starved cells cooperate to digest extracellular peptides: Both low, and high density, populations die without glutamine, but high-density populations recover when it is added back. The essential enzyme in this process is CNDP2. Inhibition of this form of cooperation impaired tumor growth.
The Impact of Blocking Adenosine Uptake in T-cells
Matthew Vander Heiden, PhD, Lester Wolfe Professor of Molecular Biology at MIT and director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, found that the nucleotide precursor adenosine suppresses anti-cancer immune responses. He presented work that showed blocking adenosine uptake in T-cells rescues proliferation and partially rescues cytokine production in these cells through salvaging pyrimidine nucleotides. Environmental conditions promoting nucleotide imbalance in T cells can regulate immune response, showing that if you can create nucleotide imbalances, then you can change cell fate.
This conference provided insight into metabolic changes, genes and pathways that support tumor growth and proliferation, and how this knowledge can inform new treatments that disrupt the strategies cancer cells depend on to survive.
Join Dr. Alok Aggarwal as he discusses the science behind the mystical and magical world of Artificial Intelligence and his new book The Fourth Industrial Revolution & 100 Years of AI (1950-2050): The Truth About AI & Why It’s Only a Tool.
Artificial Intelligence is ushering in a wave of change that will touch every aspect of our daily lives. Dr. Alok Aggarwal – one of the early innovators and developers in this field sets out to demystify Artificial Intelligence by explaining its history, capabilities, and limitations. Aggarwal will explain the science and engineering behind AI in non-technical terms, catering to a diverse audience, including product managers, program leaders, business leaders, consultants, students, aspiring entrepreneurs, and decision-makers Aggarwal will explain numerous applications of AI that are already being used in vital inventions of the current and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, including the Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchains, Metaverse, Robotics, Autonomous Vehicles, Three-Dimensional Printing, inventions related to predicting, mitigating, and adapting to rapid climate change, and innovations related to gene editing, protein folding, and personalized healthcare. Explore the transformative capabilities of AI to drive innovations in this accessible discussion.
Join The New York Academy of Sciences and the Science and the Technology Action Committee (STAC) to discuss national science strategy. Drawing on findings from STAC’s award-winning, seminal State of Science Report, we will delve into why concerned sectors, including science, industry, education, and more, must be on the same page about the importance of adopting a national strategy to drive and align federal policies and investment in R&D.
Survey data supports the argument that inadequate investment in agencies like NSF harms STEM education, our workforce, international competitiveness, and our national security. More concerning, 70% of respondents surveyed in the State of Science report expressed that our children will be worse off than us.
Join Nicholas Dirks of The New York Academy of Sciences, Dario Gil of The New York Academy of Sciences, STAC, the Chair of NSB, and forthcoming panelists to discuss the challenges facing the scientific community and how to overcome them.
To Attend Live: After your registration is approved, you must add the session to your Science Summit schedule. In the Summit system, click on “27th Sept” and add the session.
Today, around 55% of the world’s population lives in an urban environment. Urban heat islands (UHIs) have been well documented for decades. They occur when a city’s infrastructure, like roads and buildings, absorb and remit heat more than natural landscapes like forests. This causes increased heat stress, since temperatures of cities tend to be hotter than their rural counterparts, and this is increasing quickly as climate change is leading to longer, more severe, and more frequent heat waves.
Co-convened by the International Science Reserve (ISR) and the University of California Disaster Resilience Network (UC DRN) during the Science Summit at the 79 UN General Assembly, this panel will bring together expertise ranging from engineering and urban development to equity and public policy. Panelists will discuss inequities and other issues surrounding the worsening of urban heat and resulting crises.
These require cities around the globe to respond to and better prepare for the effects of increasingly extreme and frequent heat emergencies, and their related impacts. For example, tropical and coastline geographies are reaching critical “wet bulb” temperatures, at which the human body can no longer cool down through its natural sweating process. China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, the Arabian Peninsula, and the African Sahel are among the risk zones. Jacobabad, Pakistan, often called one of the hottest cities on earth, has experienced at least four extreme wet bulb events in recent years.
Similarly, in some geographies, humidity is rising in ways that make it difficult for people’s bodies to cool down at night, with adverse effects on human health. And in cities where there has not historically been the need—as well as in those lacking the resources—for cooling infrastructure, there is increased risk because they are underprepared.
Just like with a hurricane or an earthquake, the world’s most vulnerable cities need better preparation and mitigation measures to prevent and reduce severe health impacts, including death. This panel will discuss the planning possibilities to prepare cities for urban heat islands and their related impacts, including early warning systems, infrastructure mitigation, education, and heat wave management plans. We will explore how to ensure urban dwellers, especially those most at risk like the elderly and poor or those in vulnerable geographies, can remain safe.
Panelists
Tarik Benmarhnia, Professor in Epidemiology, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego
Iphigenia Keramitsoglou, Research Director in Satellite Earth Observation, Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications, and Remote Sensing, National Observatory of Athens
Ronnen Levinson, Staff Scientist and Leader of the Heat Island Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Chandni Singh, Senior Researcher, School of Environment and Sustainability, Indian Institute for Human Settlements – Bangalore
V. Kelly Turner is an associate professor of urban planning and geography and serves as associate director of the Luskin Center for Innovation, University of California, Los Angeles
Chelsea Harvey, Reporter, POLITICO’s E&E News (Moderator)
The Academy invites you to its latest event, which will focus on innovative coral restoration through the lens of both science and art.
Marine Biologist and National Geographic Explorer, National Fellow at The Explorers Club, and President of the Board of Trustees of SECORE International, Fernando Bretos, will kick off the evening with an explanation of the science behind creating genetically stronger strains of coral through the use of coral larval prorogation technique. He will also share the work of Silvia Patricia González Díaz, PhD, from the University of Havana, an esteemed scientist and longtime colleague of Bretos who oversees field operations in Cuba. We will then be joined by Tom Goreau, PhD, Director of The Global Coral Reef Alliance, to learn about “biorock,” a restoration technique that utilizes a novel way to restore corals with light electrical fields of negative electricity using the anodic-cathodic process on metal structures which then accrete calcium carbonate, a property that produces coral skeletons. “Biorock” is a “self-healing” material that, when appropriately grown, has five times the strength of concrete, which makes it excellent for wave attenuation and beach breaks. Dr. Goreau will illuminate our audience on the dire health of coral in the Caribbean, its relation to human intervention, and the concept of ‘Geotherapy‘.
The panel will end with Mara G. Haseltine, a science-based environmental Artist, exploring the link between our cultural and biological evolution. Haseltine will discuss her reef designs, which utilize innovative reef restoration methods that do not use plastic or concrete, showcased in her retrospective “Blueprints to Save the Planet:1 Coral Reefs” in the foyer of The New York Academy of Sciences new office headquarters. Haseltine will focus on her newest prototype design for a coral nursery in Cuba, combining the two restoration techniques presented by her team on this panel for coral restoration in the age of the Anthropocene.
Emily Driscoll, an award-winning science documentary filmmaker and Founder of BonSci Films, will moderate the panel.
Following the panel discussion, we invite you to an art reception featuring organic wine donated from Perkins Harter Vineyard and light refreshments. This reception will celebrate Mara G. Haseltine’s solo show, “Blueprints to Save the Planet:1 Coral Reefs”. It’s the perfect opportunity to continue the conversation after the panel event.
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