Innovative Convergence Approaches to Solving Energy and Agricultural Issues

Sunday, February 19, 2017: 1:00 PM-2:30 PM
Room 206 (Hynes Convention Center)

Tackling compelling global and social issues -- such as minimizing energy disruptions, feeding growing populations, and ensuring sufficient and safe water supplies -- is increasingly beyond the ability of a single discipline to address. Researchers and policymakers are often approaching food, energy, and water not in isolation but as part of interacting systems with complex tradeoffs. “Convergence” -- the integration of knowledge, tools, and ways of thinking from multiple fields to overcome challenges that exist at their interfaces -- provides an enabling framework to achieve these goals. The scientific advances that will inform new policy options around food, energy, and water are likely to build on insights from the life sciences, informatics, computer science, engineering, chemistry, and the physical sciences. Social sciences, humanities, and economics will play significant roles in these solutions as well. This session features leaders in the use of a convergence approach to address food, energy, and water challenges through both research and policy.


Organizer:
Gene Robinson, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Co-Organizer:
Katherine Bowman, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Moderator:
Phillip A. Sharp, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Discussant:
Jose Falck-Zepeda, International Food Policy Research Institute
Speakers:
Ellen Williams, University of Maryland, College Park
Enabling Innovative Energy Solutions in the Food, Energy, and Water Nexus
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