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FIVE LEADING EXPERTS SHARE THEIR DISCOVERIES. JOIN US.
Presenting sponsor
The Shepard Broad Foundation
William J. Gallwey, III
Sheryl Gold
KB Life Enhancement Forum
Leading
Earth
Key Biscayne Community Foundation
Joan McCaughan Family Foundation
Nicole and Myron Wang
Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits
System Science. Transforming Lives and Minds.
Established in 1943, the University of Miami 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.
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-scientific 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: development@earth.miami.edu
Programs will take place in the Rosenstiel School Auditorium
4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, FL 33149-1031
The lectures will also be offered virtually for those who cannot attend in person.
Catherine Macdonald, Ph.D., observes a shark swim off after data collection. Macdonald is the featured speaker January 14, 2025.
CATHERINE MACDONALD, Ph.D.
Biology, Ecology, and Conservation of Sharks and Rays In South Florida
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Reception 6:30 p.m., Program 7:00 p.m.
Rosenstiel School Auditorium
RSVP
Cannot attend in person? Zoom link here - https://rebrand.ly/MacDonald
Director of the Shark Research and Conservation Program, Rosenstiel School
This talk will describe recent research conducted by the Shark Research and Conservation Program at the Rosenstiel School. It will begin by discussing public perceptions and attitudes toward sharks and marine conservation, including multiple stakeholder groups and research methods. It will also present research exploring the physiological effects of recreational fishing on sharks, with a case study on nurse sharks that includes evaluating the potential effects of anthropogenic climate change on capture stress response and recovery. Finally, findings related to long-term monitoring of a multi-species shark nursery off the coast of Miami will be discussed, including sharing insights from deployment of ten-year acoustic tags on Critically Endangered juvenile great hammerheads.
Dr. Catherine Macdonald is an interdisciplinary marine conservation ecologist, and Assistant Research Professor at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. Her work broadly focuses on marine biology and ecology across scales, human-wildlife conflict, and wildlife tourism. Dr. Macdonald is the Director of Rosenstiel’s Shark Research and Conservation Program (SRC), which offers more than 50 hands-on shark tagging field trips per year to middle and high school students in South Florida, giving students the opportunity to learn about science and the species in their backyard. She is also one of the co-founders of Field School, which teaches students marine science fieldwork skills in a safe, supportive, and inclusive environment.
1 0 1 . 14 . 2025
ESTHER GUZMÁN, Ph.D.
Discovery of Anti-Cancer Drugs from the Sea
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Reception 6:30 p.m., Program 7:00 p.m.
Rosenstiel School Auditorium
RSVP
Cannot attend in person? Zoom link here - https://rebrand.ly/EGuzman
Research Professor, Marine Biomedical and Biotechnology Research, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (HBOI) at Florida Atlantic University
The oceans are a rich source of bioactive natural products. Natural products, or secondary metabolites, are small molecules made by organisms which are not essential to sustain life, but presumably confer an evolutionary advantage to the organism that makes it. Over 62% of drugs can be traced back to natural products. This lecture will focus on the cancer biology side of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute’s drug discovery program. The Cell Biology Group focuses on finding compounds with utility against cancer, the second leading cause of death in the U.S. Marine natural products represent a wealth of potential treatments against cancer, and this talk will highlight recent discovery efforts to identify potential novel treatments for different types of cancer including lung, colon, pancreatic and triple negative breast cancer.
Dr. Esther Guzmán received her B.S. in Molecular Biology/Biotechnology from Salem-Teikyo University and her Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences with emphasis in Immunology from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. She leads the Cancer Cell Biology Program at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (HBOI) at Florida Atlantic University. For the last two decades, she has been focused on finding marine natural products that have the potential to be novel therapeutics against the over a hundred diseases grouped under the term cancer. These include using marine natural products to prevent cancer formation, decrease inflammation, eliminate existing tumors, reactivate the immune system to fight cancers, stop tumors from spreading to other organs (metastasis) or use as tools to further our understanding of cancer.
02.04 . 2025
MICHAEL FALKOWSKI, Ph.D.
Thriving With Fire: Changing Fire Regimes and Solutions for Enhancing Community Resilience
Tuesday, February 25, 2025 Reception 6:30 p.m., Program 7:00 p.m.
Rosenstiel School Auditorium
RSVP
Cannot attend in person? Zoom link here - https://rebrand.ly/Falkowski
Program Manager of the NASA Wildland Fire Program at NASA
Headquarters
Fire is a natural disturbance and a fundamental process in many ecosystems. In many parts of the world, however, due to a combination of anthropogenic climate change, increased fire season length, and an expanding wildland-urban interface, fires have become more frequent, larger, faster, and ultimately more dangerous to human communities. This talk will discuss the use of Earth Observation data to understand climate change driven changes in fire regimes and present solutions to improve fire mitigation, management, and recovery that can help build more resilient communities.
Dr. Michael Falkowski is the Program Manager of the NASA Wildland Fire program at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, where he focuses on facilitating the development of wildland fire technology, research, and related applications. Dr. Falkowski joined NASA from Colorado State University in 2018 where he was a Professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability and conducted research in conjunction with a variety of governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations to solve problems in ecosystem science and management. He has previously held faculty positions at the University of Minnesota and Michigan Technological University and was also a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Research Fellow with the Canadian Forest Service at the Pacific Forestry Centre in Victoria, British Columbia. Prior to his academic career, Dr. Falkowski also served on wildfire and prescribed fire crews, so he brings hands-on experience from that community.
JAMES W. HURRELL, Ph.D.
Can (Should) We Cool the Planet by Changing the Atmosphere?
An Introduction to Solar Climate Intervention
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Reception 6:30 p.m., Program 7:00 p.m.
Rosenstiel School Auditorium
RSVP
Cannot attend in person? Zoom link here - https://rebrand.ly/Hurrell
Scott Presidential Chair of Environmental Science and Engineering Professor, Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University
There is growing concern that current international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, combined with adaptation efforts, are insufficient to avoid intolerable climate change impacts over the coming decades. This has stimulated a rapidly growing interest among researchers, governments, and policy analysts in understanding if the deployment of some form of Solar Climate Intervention (SCI) would help to reduce future risks from adverse climate change impacts, and provide more time for humanity to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. However, proposed SCI strategies involve significant, uncertain risks that must be understood. In this talk, Dr. Hurrell will present a brief overview of SCI and argue for the importance of research on the topic.
Dr. James W. Hurrell is the Scott Presidential Chair of Environmental Science and Engineering at Colorado State University. Previously, he served as the Director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Dr. Hurrell’s research has centered on empirical and modeling studies and diagnostic analyses to better understand climate, climate variability, climate predictability, and proposed climate intervention approaches. He has been extensively involved in the World Climate Research Programme, including leading the Scientific Steering Groups of both the U.S. and International Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) research programs. Dr. Hurrell has also served the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in many ways, and he is currently a member of the NASEM Advisory Panel for the Division of Earth and Life Sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, the U.K. Royal Meteorological Society, and the American Geophysical Union.
JONATHAN ZAWISLAK, Ph.D.
Into the Eye: The Science Behind Hurricane Hunting
Tuesday. April 22, 2025 Reception 6:30 p.m., Program 7:00 p.m.
Rosenstiel School Auditorium
RSVP
Cannot attend in person? Zoom link here - https://rebrand.ly/Zawislak
Meteorologist and Flight Director at NOAA’s Aircraft Operations Center
Every summer hurricane hunter aircraft, their crews, and the scientists that fly on them, play a critical role in not only obtaining the measurements that inform the public as to the hazards and risks posed by storms as they threaten landfall, but are also used by researchers to improve our understanding about the processes that result in hurricane formation, intensity change, and the hazards they pose. This lecture will present an end-to-end perspective from how we fly aircraft into these chaotic storms, to the types of data collected, to how that data reaches the end users to improve forecasts and our understanding of hurricanes.
Dr. Jon Zawislak is a Meteorologist and Flight Director at NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center (AOC). Jon is a veteran hurricane flier, having flown over 200 passes of hurricane eyewalls in the NOAA P-3 hurricane hunter aircraft. After spending 15 years in academia and at NOAA/AOML’s Hurricane Research Division previously researching hurricane formation and intensification using decades of aircraft and satellite data, Jon joined AOC in 2023 and now applies his meteorological knowledge to brief aircrews for mission flights and works with the pilots during the flight to safely maneuver the aircraft through the storms to accomplish the mission and science objectives.
