Open Science and The Future of Climate Innovation | NY #Techweek

​Please join us for an intimate conversation about Open Science and the Future of Climate Innovation with Ellen Jorgensen, Kaitlin Thaney, Maria João Sousa, and Joe Fallurin, hosted by Kyle Barnes. Snacks and refreshments will be served during a networking happy hour after the event.

​This private event is for climate tech leaders and those in the open science space.

​Ellen Jorgensen co-founded Genspace, the world’s first community biotech lab, pioneering accessible biotechnology education and fostering open science. As Director of Research at Carbonbridge, she advances sustainable bioproduction of low-carbon fuels. She is a believer in the power of public participation in science. As founder and president of the nonprofit Biotech Without Borders she leads a group working on equitable distribution of biological technologies such as synthetic biology. Her science communication efforts include two TED talks (Biohacking- You Can Do It Too and What You Need To Know About CRISPR) with over 3 million views.

​Kaitlin Thaney is the Executive Director of Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI), a nonprofit initiative dedicated to increasing investment in and adoption of open tools and software for research. Her career has been centered around open infrastructure organizations; helping them think strategically about program design, participatory engagement, and sustainability. Previously she served as the Endowment Director for the Wikimedia Foundation, where she led development of a fund to sustain the future of Wikipedia and free knowledge. Prior to joining Wikimedia, Thaney directed the program portfolio for the Mozilla Foundation, following her time building the Mozilla Science Lab, a program to serve the open research community. She was on the founding team for Digital Science, where she helped launch and advise programs to serve researchers worldwide, building on her time at Creative Commons, where she crafted legal, technical, and social infrastructure for sharing data on the web.

​Maria João Sousa is a PiTech Startup Postdoc at Cornell Tech and Chair and Incoming Executive Director at Climate Change AI, which is a global non-profit that catalyzes impactful work at the intersection of climate change and machine learning. She received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa. Her doctoral thesis focused on cooperative aerial robotics and artificial intelligence for wildfire detection and monitoring systems and was developed as a research fellow at both IDMEC in the Center of Intelligent Systems and at ADAI in the Forest Fire Research Center. Her research interests are in the areas of computational intelligence, robotics, and networked systems. She was nominated for the UN Environment Young Champions of the Earth 2018 Prize for her project on decentralized intelligent sensor networks for fire detection and monitoring. She has contributed and collaborated on the ITU/WMO/UNEP Focus Group on AI for Natural Disaster Management (FG-AI4NDM).

​Joe Fallurin is a manager for oil and gas climate solutions at RMI.  Founded in 1982 as Rocky Mountain Institute, RMI is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit that transforms global energy systems through market-driven solutions to align with a 1.5°C future and secure a clean, prosperous, zero-carbon future for all.  Joe and his team use data to make emissions more visible and catalyze action towards climate-intelligent solutions across the oil and gas supply chain.  To incentivize accountability, he leads development of tools to reduce the emissions of oil products such as carbon accounting improvements for plastics and briefs on how decisionmakers can cut overall plastic use.  Joe also co-leads development of RMI’s open-source emissions visibility tools including the Oil Climate Index Plus Gas (OCI+) and contributions to the Climate TRACE coalition launched at COP.  He is a chemical engineer by training with nearly 10 years of experience cutting the emissions intensity of the oil and gas sector.

​Kyle Barnes is a Product Manager at Schmidt Futures. His work includes developing frontier earth observation foundation models with Clay, automating techno-economic analyses with Homeworld Collective, and supporting emerging climate science with Schmidt Science Climate Institute. He is also the Executive Director at Representable.org, advocating for equitable community representation in mapping processes.

​Schedule:

​5-5:30pm: Registration, refreshments and appetizers.

​5:30-6:30pm: Open Science and the Future of Climate Innovation panel.

​6:30-8pm: Happy hour and networking.

​Location of the event will be shared to approved registrations.

​Note: Security will be checking RSVPs, and walk-ins and +1s will not be admitted.

​This event is a part of #TechWeek - a week of events hosted by VCs and startups to bring together the tech ecosystem.”