Sustainability - Question and Answer Session

Session
Tuesday, 12 March 2013
00:12 - 00:12
Duration: 28 mins
Publication date: 12 Mar 2013
Location: IETTV_Room, IETTV_Venue, London, United Kingdom
Part of event Global Grand Challenges Summit

About the session

Climate change and the impact of population growth on resources are among the greatest risks to mankind's existence, yet efforts to mitigate these risks have been partial and haphazard. There is still no consensus on how sustainable development can be reconciled with strong growth in emerging and developing economies that is lifting billions out of poverty. This panel discussion looks at whether a global systems approach to engineering innovation can bolster political efforts to reconcile economic growth with environmental sustainability.

Channels

IET News

Speakers

Jim Al-Khalili

University of Surrey, Department of Physics, Professor of Physics

Jim Al-Khalili is a professor of physics, author and broadcaster based at the University of Surrey where he currently teaches and also holds a chair in public engagement in science. He received his PhD in nuclear physics in 1989 and remains active in research in theoretical physics. He is active as a science communicator and has written a number of popular science and history of science books, between them translated into over twenty languages. His latest is Paradox: The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics. Jim is a regular presenter of TV science documentaries, including the Bafta nominated Chemistry: A Volatile History and, most recently, Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity and Order and Disorder, both for BBC4. He also presents the weekly BBC Radio 4 programme, The Life Scientific. He provides expert advice for bodies such as the Royal Society, the British Council and the Department for Education. He is also active in public life and is a strong advocate for rationalism and secularism and has recently taken over as president of the British Humanist Association. He is a recipient of the Royal Society Michael Faraday medal and the Institute of Physics Kelvin Medal. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2008.
John Loughhead

UK Energy Research Centre, Executive Director

John Loughhead is Executive Director of the UK Energy Research Centre, a distributed organisation drawing together 150 academic researchers and some 30 universities which is the focal point of the UK energy research programme. He was previously Vice-President of the Alstom group. He has been active in energy systems research for over 30 years, developing new generation, conversion and system technologies, and has extensive interactions with UK and international government bodies on energy policy development and new technology deployment. He has recently been appointed the UK-China Science Focal Point for Energy and Renewables. John is a graduate in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College, London, where he also spent five years in computational fluid dynamics research. He is Past-President of the UK's Institution of Engineering and Technology, Fellow of the UK and Australian national academies of engineering, Professor of Engineering at Cardiff University and Fellow of Queen Mary University of London.
Prof. Calestous Juma

Harvard's Kennedy School, Professor of the Practice of International Development

Professor Calestous Juma is an internationally recognized authority on the application of science and technology to sustainable development. He is Professor of the Practice of International Development and Director of the Science, Technology, and Globalization Project at Harvard's Kennedy School. He directs the school's Agricultural Innovation in Africa Project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Calestous sits on the selection jury of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering and co-chairs the African Union's High Level Panel on Science, Technology and Innovation. After receiving his DPhil in science and technology policy studies in the UK, he founded the African Centre for Technology Studies in Nairobi, the continent’s first independent think tank on innovation. He is a former executive director of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, former Chancellor of the University of Guyana and has been a member of the governing boards of leading international organisations working on sustainable development. A Kenyan national, Calestous has been elected to several prestigious academies including the Royal Society of London, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS), the UK Royal Academy of Engineering and the African Academy of Sciences. He has received numerous international awards and honorary degrees.
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs

Columbia University, Professor of Health Policy and Management

Professor Jeffrey Sachs is a world-renowned professor of economics, leader in sustainable development, senior UN advisor, bestselling author, and syndicated columnist whose monthly newspaper columns appear in more than 80 countries. Jeffrey serves as the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals, having held the same position under former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He is co-founder and Chief Strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, and is Director of the Millennium Villages Project. He is also Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has authored three New York Times bestsellers in the past seven years: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), and The Price of Civilization (2011)
Allard Castelein

Shell, Vice President Environment

Allard Castelein joined Shell in The Netherlands in 1987. For the first couple of years he held roles in trading, sales and marketing. From 1992 he lived and worked in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom in various roles in marketing, planning consultancy, business development and general management. In 2002 Allard returned to The Netherlands to join the Executive Board of the Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij, a Shell-Exxon JV. In 2003 he became Commercial Manager for Shell's European Upstream business. In this role he led a major reorganisation and change management program. Since mid-2009, Allard is Vice President Environment for Shell. He leads the Environment function and is accountable for strategy, standards, controls and strategic partnerships. Born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in 1958, Allard graduated in medicine at Erasmus University. He holds non-executive and advisory positions with the World Environment Center, the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association, the X Prize Foundation and The Netherlands 2028 Olympic bid.
Angela Belcher

Materials Chemist

Angela Belcher is a Materials Chemist with expertise in the fields of biomaterials, biomolecular materials, organic-inorganic interfaces and solid state chemistry. Her primary research focus is evolving new materials for energy, electronics and the environment. She received her BS in Creative Studies with an emphasis in biology, and a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry in 1997 from The University of California, Santa Barbara. Following a year of postdoctoral research in electrical engineering, Angela joined the faculty at The University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Chemistry in 1999. She joined the faculty at MIT in 2002 and now holds the W.M. Keck Chair in Energy. She founded the companies Cambrios Technologies, Inc. in 2002, and Siluria Technologies, Inc. in 2007. Angela was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012 and received the Eni Prize for Renewable and Non-conventional Energy in 2010. In 2007, Time Magazine named her a “Hero” for her research related to Climate Change. In 2006, she was named Research Leader of the Year by Scientific American and was awarded the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award. In 2005, she was named as one of 10 to watch by Fortune magazine for “how the world will work in the next 75 years.”

About the session

Channels

Title