Past Conversations

RENEW’s Catalyzing Conversations' visiting speakers whose research fostered cross-disciplinary dialogues and exchanges at UB since 2023.

2025

April 10, 2025 - Nancy Grimm

Nancy B. Gimm, National Academy of Sciences member and Regents Professor at Arizona State University, is an ecosystem ecologist who studies the interactions of climate change, human activities, resilience, and biogeochemical processes in urban and stream ecosystems.

March 10, 2025 - Lynn Katz

Lynn Katz has over thirty years of experience examining the application of aquatic surface chemistry to understanding the fate and transport of contaminants in the environment and toward the development of treatment technologies for contaminated water and soil. 

2024

October 2, 2024 - Thalappil Pradeep

Thalappil Pradeep is an Institute Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), Chennai, India whose interest focus is molecular and nanoscale materials. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

May 8, 2024 - James R. Elliott

James Elliott is the Chair of the Sociology Department at Rice University. He is a Faculty Affiliate of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research and former advisor to the National Science Foundation’s program in Sociology.

February 15, 2024 - Rebecca J. Nelson

Rebecca Nelson is a Professor at Cornell University, in the School of Integrative Plant Science (SIPS) and the Department of Global Development.  She serves as SIPS’ associate director for research.

2023

October 16, 2023 - Janet Hering

Janet Hering is the retired Director of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science & Technology (Eawag) and Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich and Lausanne.

October 5, 2023 - Indigenous Films for Indigenous Peoples Week

The film, Saging the World, is a short documentary produced by Rose Ramirez, Deborah Small, and the California Native Plant Society to foster awareness and inspire action for white sage. 

October 2, 2023 - Benjamin Sovacool

Benjamin K. Sovacool is the Director of the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS) and a Professor in the Department of Earth & Environment. 

September 13, 2023 - Caj Matheson

Caj Matheson is a Councilman for the Coeur d’Alene Tribe and the Director of the Tribe’s Department of Natural Resources. In these positions, his primary role is to represent the Tribe in policy matters with leaders from federal, state, and other tribal governments.  

May 3, 2023 - David Lodge

Dr. Lodge, the Francis J. DiSalvo director of the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, is an internationally recognized conservation biologist, a past president of the Ecological Society of America, and the founder and former director of the University of Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative.

Catalyzing Conversations is a sponsored speaker series aimed to bring to UB speakers whose research foci can catalyze cross-disciplinary research collaborations related to energy, environment, and water, and their socio-economic impacts. RENEW affiliated faculty across the university may nominate and host speakers, scheduling talks during regularly scheduled seminar series or at a different time if preferred by the hosting department or school. Convened across the UB campuses, “Catalyzing Conversations” are open to all.
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