WE ARE EXTREMELY GRATEFUL TO OUR SPONSORS
The
Broad Foundation
LEADING EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE. TRANSFORMING LIVES AND MINDS.
Established in 1943, the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science unites cutting-edge technology with top-notch minds to tackle global challenges, including weather, climate, sea level rise, hurricanes, marine conservation and sustainable aquaculture. Through transformational research, dynamic interdisciplinary academics and support for the establishment of sound environmental policy, we explore the Earth’s great mysteries, improve the quality of human life and educate tomorrow’s leading scientists.
Shepard
William J. Gallwey, III Sheryl Gold KB Life Enhancement Forum
Key Biscayne Community Foundation Joan McCaughan Family Foundation Gail Nansen in honor of Russell F. Nansen Nicole and Myron Wang Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits
Join us as we travel the world with distinguished scientists and explorers at the edge of discovery during this series of evening programs designed for the non-scienti c community.
All lectures are free and open to the public. To register for one or more lectures, please go to the link for each speaker. For further information, email: events@earth.miami.edu or call 305-421-4061.
Programs will take place at the Rosenstiel School Auditorium, 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Virginia Key, in accordance with the latest CDC guidelines, local government regulations, and/or University guidelines; all subject to change due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lectures will also be o ered virtually for those who cannot attend in person.
FREDERICK H. HANSELMANN, Ph.D.
Real Pirates of the Caribbean: The Search for and Study of Shipwrecks from Captain Morgan and Captain Kidd
Tuesday, January 24, 2023 Reception 6:30pm, Program 7:00pm
Rosenstiel School Auditorium 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Virginia Key
RSVP Here
RSVP Here
Director of the Underwater Archaeology Program and the Scientific Diving and Boating Program at the UM Rosenstiel School UM Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science
One of the most romanticized aspects of history is that of pirates. What do we really know about pirates and what is fact and what is ction? Little speci c evidence of pirates and their actions exists in the archaeological record and, oftentimes, it is di cult to distinguish the identi cation and function of certain sites, features, and artifacts from being piratical or simply commonplace. In fact, nding a site and making the connection to piracy is a di cult assertion and sometimes controversial. Captain Henry Morgan and Captain William Kidd are two of the most famous pirates of all time. Join Dr. Hanselmann to learn about the search for and research into sunken pirate eets in the Caribbean. Through comparative analysis of the archaeological and historical records coupled with ocean exploration, we can get a glimpse into the reality of what a pirate’s life truly meant and how underwater archaeological sites still live on in the modern day as marine protected areas. In a broader sense, archaeology is a science that allows us to interact with our past and, hopefully, informs our future.
Fritz Hanselmann has almost 20 years of experience with all aspects of underwater archaeological eld operations and has directed numerous projects in Latin America, the Caribbean, and North America. He is a technical, cave, and closed-circuit rebreather (CCR) diver, a certi ed SCUBA instructor, a Nautical Archaeology Society tutor, and a Fellow of the Explorer's Club. He has been featured widely in the press and media, including documentaries and programs on the National Geographic Channel, the Sundance Channel, the Travel Channel, and the South by Southwest Film Festival. He is also the author of Captain Kidd's Lost Ship: The Wreck of the Quedagh Merchant, co-author of The Maritime Landscape of the Isthmus of Panamá, and a contributing author to Pieces of Eight: More Archaeology of Piracy.
RSVP Here
DAVID KAPLAN, Ph.D.
Meat and Fish Foods of the Future via Cellular Agriculture
Tuesday, February 21, 2023 Reception 6:30pm, Program 7:00pm
Rosenstiel School Auditorium 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Virginia Key
The need for future foods for the ever-growing population requires consideration of alternative approaches to enhance food sustainability, nutrition and security. To address this need, Dr. Kaplan has been pursuing a cell-based, tissue engineering approach. His lab’s central hypothesis is that a sustainable, cost-e ective, and scalable cultivated-meat and sh, and alternative protein platform will increase food availability options while decreasing environmental impact. Dr. Kaplan will review the considerable progress towards this goal. Further, there remain many challenges and opportunities, from cell types and cell engineering, to media formulations, scale up requirements and nutritional issues, which will also be discussed.
Dr. Kaplan’s research focus is on biopolymer engineering, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine and cellular agriculture. He has published over 1,000 peer reviewed papers, is editor-in-chief of ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering and he serves on many editorial boards and programs for journals and universities. He directed the NIH P41 Tissue Engineering Resource Center (TERC) that involves Tufts University and Columbia University for 15 years. His lab has been responsible for over 150 patents issued or allowed, and numerous start-up companies. He has also received a number of awards for his research and teaching and was elected Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and to the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Kaplan recently received funding from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture to establish the rst national center in the U.S. dedicated to research in cellular agriculture.
AARON BERNSTEIN, MD, MPH
Climate Action as a Prescription for Health
Monday, March 6, 2023 Program 7:00pm (Virtual Only)
RSVP Here
Interim Director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health (Harvard Chan C-CHANGE), a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Environmental Health and Climate Change
From stronger hurricanes and oods, disease spread by mosquitoes, and extraordinary heat, the health risks to everyone in Miami-Dade from climate change are already all too apparent. As much as Miami-Dade County may be a canary in the proverbial coal mine when it comes to detecting the e ects of climate change on health, it also has moved towards taking climate actions that can lead all of us, and especially those least well o , forward to leading healthier lives. Dr. Bernstein’s presentation will demonstrate how climate actions can promote health and health equity in ways that can create outsized bene ts to the most vulnerable communities while at the same time protecting the climate.
Dr. Bernstein focuses on the health impacts of the climate crisis on children’s health and advancing solutions to address its causes to improve the health and wellbeing of children around the world. He is an author on the Human Health chapter of the Fifth National Climate Assessment, a Congressionally mandated report that evaluates the impacts of climate change on humans and natural systems in the U.S. He regularly testi es before Congress on the child health impacts of climate change and he is a trusted voice for major news outlets. Dr. Bernstein leads Climate MD, a Harvard Chan C-CHANGE program to encourage physicians to transform climate change from an issue dominated by politics and concerns about the future or faraway places, to one that matters to every person’s health here and now.
ARYÉ ELFENBEIN, MD, Ph.D.
Cultivated Sushi: An Introduction to the Promise and Challenges of Cellular Agriculture
Tuesday, March 14, 2023 Reception 6:30pm, Program 7:00pm
Rosenstiel School Auditorium 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Virginia Key
RSVP Here
Co-Founder, Wildtype, and Cardiologist
Cellular agriculture, the cultivation of seafood and meat directly from cells, has emerged as a promising approach to o set the unsustainable practices and deleterious e ects of our food system. Unlike plant-based approaches to recreate avors, textures, and nutrition, cellular agriculture involves growing animal cells into familiar cuts of seafood in brewery-type systems, without the need for farming, shing, or animal slaughter. As a co-founder of biotechnology company Wildtype, Dr. Elfenbein leads a team of world-class scientists, engineers, nutrition experts and entrepreneurs with a collective passion for pioneering a new way of putting sh on the table. He will explore the history, underlying technologies, and challenges for the eld, in addition to its potential impact on the future of food.
Aryé Elfenbein co-founded Wildtype, a company dedicated to creating the cleanest, most sustainable seafood on the planet. Wildtype has developed brewery-like systems to grow cuts of seafood directly from cells. He earned an MD and Ph.D. at Dartmouth and Kyoto University and completed his clinical training in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at Yale. Prior to co-founding Wildtype, Dr. Elfenbein completed a fellowship in cardiovascular regenerative medicine at The Gladstone Institutes/UCSF. A classically trained cardiologist and musician, he continues to practice critical care medicine and piano when he’s away from Wildtype.
SHARAN MAJUMDAR, Ph.D.
Climate Resilience and Hurricanes
Tuesday, April 11, 2023
Reception 6:30pm, Program 7:00pm
Rosenstiel School Auditorium 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Virginia Key
RSVP Here
Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the UM Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, and Interim Co-Director of UM's new Climate Resilience Academy
In 2022, the University of Miami (UM) launched a Climate Resilience Academy, a functional unit that supports interdisciplinary problem-driven research and education to train the next generation and deliver solutions to climate change impacts and environmental stressors, in partnership with industry, government, universities, and other stakeholders. Dr. Majumdar will introduce the broad topic of climate resilience, together with a rich variety of collaborative projects across UM that are aimed at tackling these di cult issues. Also, he will present an exciting and innovative new undergraduate course on Resilience, together with further educational goals to be supported by the Academy. Finally, Dr. Majumdar will discuss some resilience and forecasting challenges in the context of storm surge, extreme wind, and ooding rain impacts from hurricanes such as Ian (2022).
Sharan Majumdar earned his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Mathematics at Cambridge University, then switched into atmospheric science as a postdoc at Penn State in 1997. He has been on the faculty at UM since 2002, and served as the Rosenstiel School’s Associate Dean of Graduate Studies 2016-2019. Together with his research group, he investigates tropical cyclone formation and intensi cation, involving predictability diagnostics, ensemble prediction, model evaluation, satellite and aircraft observations, data assimilation, and risk communication. He teaches undergraduate courses in tropical meteorology and weather forecasting, and graduate courses in hurricanes and predictability. He is also an active participant in collaborative initiatives convened by the American Meteorological Society and World Meteorological Organization.
MANDË HOLFORD, Ph.D.
Mollusks to Medicine aka Venom to Drugs
Monday, April 24, 2023
Reception 6:30pm, Program 7:00pm
Rosenstiel School Auditorium
4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Virginia Key
RSVP Here
Associate Professor in Chemistry at Hunter College and CUNY-Graduate Center, with scientific appointments at The American Museum of Natural History and Weill Cornell Medicine
Venoms—molecules that evolved as toxins—have the power to transform lives. Marine chemical biologist Dr. Mandë Holford studies snail venom and its ability to disable prey by interfering with cell signaling. These peptides can provide insights into cellular physiology, informing e orts to develop new medical therapeutics, new agricultural pesticides with gentler environmental impacts, and myriad other innovations yet to be discovered. This talk will demonstrate the scienti c path from mollusks to medicine examining how venom evolved over time in the terebrid snails (Terebridae), and how we can use this evolutionary knowledge as a roadmap for discovering and characterizing new compounds with therapeutic potential for treating pain and cancer.
Dr. Holford’s research, from mollusks to medicine, combines -omic technologies with chemical biology to examine venoms and venomous animals as agents of change and innovation in evolution and in manipulating cellular physiology in pain and cancer. She is active in science education, advancing the public understanding of science, and science diplomacy. She co-founded Killer Snails, LLC, an award winning EdTech learning games company that uses extreme creatures, like venomous marine snails, as a conduit to advance scienti c learning in K-12 classrooms. Her honors include being named: a 2020 Sustainability Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, Breakthrough Women in Science by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and NPR’s Science Friday, a Wings WorldQuest Women of Discovery Fellow, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, an NSF CAREER awardee, and Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences. Her Ph.D. is from The Rockefeller University.