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The sustainable planet: opportunities and challenges for science, technology and society

12 - 14 July 2010 12:00 - 12:30

 

Organised by Professor Judith Howard CBE FRS, Professor Ash Amin FBA, Professor Martyn Chamberlain and Professor Matthew Davidson

This meeting will review global sustainability in the context of: climate change; supply of essential materials, food and energy; and new disease patterns. The challenges to global societies will be discussed and the potential of advances in biology, chemistry, physics, medicine, energy technology and materials science to ameliorate these problems will be considered, together with the intrinsic limits of wholly scientific solutions. 

The programme is available to download (PDF).

Biographies and audio recordings are available below.

The proceedings of this meeting are due to be published in a future issue of Philosophical Transactions A.

Organisers

  • Professor Judith Howard FRS

  • Professor Ash Amin FBA, Durham University, UK

    Ash Amin is Professor of Geography at Durham University and Executive Director of the university’s Institute of Advanced Study.  He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Fellow of the British Academy. He was awarded the Royal Geographical Society’s Edward Heath Prize in 1998 for contributions to research on Europe.

    One of the UK's most celebrated urbanists, Professor Amin is known for his work on the geographies of modern living, for example urban and regional society as relationally and materially constituted; and globalisation as an everyday process that thoroughly reconstitutes meanings of the local. He has also contributed to re-thinking the economy as a cultural entity, while his writings on multiculturalism have helped change policy on the management of ethnic diversity. He has (co) authored or (co) edited 17 books and (co) written over 100 journal articles and book chapters. His most recent books include: Cities: Re-imagining the Urban (with Nigel Thrift, Polity,2002); Architectures of Knowledge (with Patrick Cohendet,  Oxford University Press, 2004); The Blackwell Cultural Economy Reader (edited with Nigel Thrift, Blackwell, 2005); Community, Economic Creativity and Organization (edited with Joanne Roberts, Oxford University Press, 2008); The Social Economy (edited, Zed Books, 2009); and Thinking About Almost Everything (edited with Michael O’Neill, Profile Books, 2009).   

  • Professor Martyn Chamberlain, Durham University, UK

    JM Chamberlain is Professor of Applied Physics and Master of Grey College at Durham University.  Before taking up his present post, JMC worked at Nottingham and Leeds Universities. JMC is a semiconductor physicist by background, although for a number of years he has worked on the development of the technology and applicable science of the terahertz (THz) frequency range. This has involved the realisation of new types of components and systems, together with the exploitation of THz radiation in such areas as: medical imaging, biology, security and non-destructive testing. He has also led a number of EU programmes in this field. He is one of the founder members of the Durham Biophysical Sciences Institute. He has authored more than 250 papers, given many invited talks and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. 

  • Professor Matthew Davidson, University of Bath, UK

    Matthew Davidson is Whorrod Professor of Sustainable Chemical Technologies and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies at the University of Bath, UK. His research focuses on the application of molecular chemistry and catalysis to sustainable chemical processes such as manufacture of renewable fuels, chemicals and plastics. He graduated in Chemistry from the University of Wales, Swansea and received a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Following a Research Fellowship at St John’s College, Cambridge, he held Lectureships in Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and Durham University before being appointed to a Chair of Chemistry at Bath in 1999. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a previous recipient of its Harrison Memorial Prize.