Distinguished Lecture Series

Peter Rive, Co-Founder and CTO of SolarCity gives an Inaugurual Lecture at UB on March 9th, 2016

RENEW Distinguished Lecture Series in Energy, Environment and Water Sustainability seeks to promote dialogue and interaction with UB's faculty, students and the local community stakeholders with renowned leaders in science, technology and policy in academia, industry, and government. RENEW promotes interdisciplinary research activities to position UB as a global leader in select areas of energy, environment and water.

Peter Rive
1/4/18
Peter Rive is Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of SolarCity. Mr. Rive has helped grow SolarCity into the largest full-service solar provider in the nation.
John Fullerton
10/18/22
John Fullerton is the founder and president of the Capital Institute, "a collaborative effort to explore and effect economic transition to a more just, regenerative, and thus sustainable way of living through the transformation of finance."
Marc Edwards
10/23/17
Widely known as the “Hero of Flint”, Marc Edwards is the Charles Lunsford Professor of Civil Engineering at Virginia Tech.
Bill Ford
11/11/16
William Clay Ford Jr. is the Executive Chairman of Ford Motor Company. He is the great-grandson of Henry Ford. He joined the Ford Motor Company’s Board of Directors in 1988 and has been its chairman since January 1999.
Jeremy Jacobs Jr.
11/11/16
Jeremy M. Jacobs Jr. is Co-Chief Executive Officer of Delaware North, a hospitality and food service company that is one of the most admired family-owned and operated companies in the world.
Mark Tercek
11/11/16
Mark Tercek is president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the global conservation organization known for its intense focus on collaboration and getting things done for the benefit of people and nature.
Yet-Ming Chiang
10/17/22
Dr. Yet-Ming Chiang, Kyocera Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, is a world-renowned, clean energy scientist and technologist focusing on electrical storage for transportation, renewables, and grid-scale applications.
Michael Mann
6/2/17
Dr. Michael E. Mann is Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State, with joint appointments in the Department of Geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI). He is also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC).
Linda Birnbaum
9/21/17
Linda S. Birnbaum, Ph.D., is director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) of the National Institutes of Health, and the National Toxicology Program (NTP).
Esther S. Takeuchi
5/14/18
Dr. Esther S. Takeuchi is a leading scientist in energy storage and battery development world-wide. She is a recipient of the Presidential level, National Medal of Technology and Innovation. She is inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is a Charter Member of the National Academy of Innovation.
Vandana Shiva
10/17/22
Dr. Vandana Shiva is trained as a Physicist and did her Ph.D. on the subject “Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory” from the University of Western Ontario in Canada.
Sebastian Copeland
8/15/18
In 2017, Men’s Journal named Copeland one of the world’s top 25 adventurers of the last 25 years. He is an award-winning photographer, explorer, author, and environmental advocate.
Winona LaDuke
10/17/22
Winona LaDuke is a rural development economist and author working on issues of Indigenous Economics , Food and Energy Policy. She lives and works on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, and is the Executive Director of Honor the Earth (HtE).