UC Berkeley is at the scientific forefront in applying solutions critical to the wellbeing of our world. A signature strength of the University’s mission to serve the public good is how its researchers and students harness interdisciplinary strategies to tackle the thorniest global challenges and opportunities.
This moderated panel discussion showcases one such innovative campus collaboration between experts in the environmental and data sciences. They will discuss their partnership, including how it is shaping responses to climate change and improved ecosystem health for all. We look forward to your company and to your questions.
Register to attend the event here.
If you have any questions or need help registering for this event, you can email Kassie Darling, Director of Events and Special Programs, at kdarling@berkeley.edu.
Speakers:
David Ackerly, Dean, Rausser College of Natural Resources (Moderator)
David Ackerly is the Dean of UC Berkeley's Rausser College of Natural Resources with joint appointments in the departments of Integrative Biology and Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. His research interests include climate change impacts on biodiversity, integration of phylogenetics and ecology, and conservation biology. His research is used to inform strategies of biodiversity conservation in the face of climate change, with a focus on California parks and open space.
Justin Brashares, Professor and G.R. & W.M. Goertz Chair, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM), UC Berkeley
Justin Brashares' research in ESPM combines traditional ecology with interdisciplinary science to study how human activities are rapidly changing oceans, forests and savannas, and to highlight and communicate the everyday consequences of these changes for nature and society. Through these efforts, their work combines biodiversity conservation with economics, anthropology, public health, nutrition, environmental justice and journalism. His research attempts to understand how our consumption of wild animals and conversion of natural habitats affects the dynamics of animal communities and the persistence of populations. Work in Justin's group extends beyond traditional animal conservation to consider the economic, political and cultural factors that drive and, in turn, are driven by, changes in wildlife abundance and diversity. Through these efforts, his group strives to propose empirically-based, interdisciplinary strategies for biodiversity conservation.
Fernando Pérez, Associate Professor, Statistics, UC Berkeley; Faculty Scientist, Data Science and Technology Division, LBNL
Fernando Pérez (@fperez_org) is an associate professor in Statistics at UC Berkeley and scientist at LBNL. He builds open source tools for humans to use computers as companions in thinking and collaboration, mostly in the scientific Python ecosystem (IPython, Jupyter & friends). His research interests include questions at the nexus of software and geoscience, seeking to build the computational and data ecosystem to tackle problems like climate change with collaborative, open, reproducible, and extensible scientific practices. He is a co-founder of the 2i2c.org initiative, the Berkeley Institute for Data Science and the NumFOCUS Foundation. He is a recipient of the 2017 ACM Software System Award and the 2012 FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software.
Christine Wilkinson, Ph.D. Candidate, ESPM, UC Berkeley
Christine's research interests include multidisciplinary mapping, human-wildlife conflict, carnivore movement ecology, and participatory methods. For her current research, she is using remote sensing and GIS analyses in conjunction with participatory mapping to understand landscape permeability for carnivores, the dynamics of livestock predation instances and perceived human-hyena conflict risk, and the intersection between human and carnivore resource needs in and around Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya. Before attending UC Berkeley, she spent several years working in conservation biology and natural resource management around the USA and in East Africa. She was also an informal educator, piloting and implementing programs for teens and young adults at the California Academy of Sciences and in Uganda. Her experiences as an educator have developed in her a passion for conducting applied participatory research and for empowering community-created solutions to pressing conservation challenges.