Vivek Srikrishnan (Cornell University, Biological and Environmental Engineering)

Abstract: Climate change enhances and creates risks. Identifying and implementing sound climate risk management strategies involves many challenges, including deep and dynamic uncertainties, complex feedbacks between climate and socioeconomic systems, and the different scales on which different risk management strategies operate. In this talk, I will describe several ways in which climate change affects risk calculation, why uncertainty plays a critical role in climate risk analysis, and different approaches to climate risk management.

Bio: Vivek Srikrishnan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological & Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. He works on quantifying the impacts of climate change and identifying and evaluating strategies for climate risk management. His research employs methods and insights from systems engineering, data science, decision science, and economics.

Jeremy Lee Wallace (Cornell University, Department of Government)

Abstract: Without action from China, the world will not be able to contain the climate emergency. China produced nearly 30% of global carbon emissions in 2020, making Xi Jinping’s declaration that year that his country would be carbon neutral by 2060 one of epic significance. Will China be able to meet or exceed this goal, and what political and economic roadblocks stand in its way? This lecture introduces some of the challenges, opportunities, and competing narratives at play, with a particular focus on real estate construction and China’s growth model.

Bio: Prof. Wallace teaches courses related to urbanization, authoritarianism, and economic development. China’s Next Economy is a lecture course focusing on today’s debates about the costs and opportunities facing the leaders and citizens of China as they transition into the technology and service-dominated future.

Patrick Fulton (Cornell University, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences)

Abstract: Motivated by Cornell University’s aspiration to use geothermal heat to replace fossil fuels to heat campus buildings, in the summer of 2022, a 3-km deep geothermal exploratory well, the Cornell University Borehole Observatory (CUBO), was drilled on the Ithaca, NY campus. CUBO extends through largely low porosity and permeability Paleozoic sedimentary rocks above granulite-grade Grenville metamorphic basement rocks.

The main objective of CUBO is to explore potential fracture-dominated reservoir targets in both …