ANNUAL MEETING AND STUDENT RESEARCH CONFERENCE

PLENARY AND KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

November 14–17, 2019
Monona Terrace Convention Center
Madison, Wisconsin
USA

MAY BERENBAUM

VINT CERF

November 15, 2019

KIM COBB

Georgia Power Chair, ADVANCE Professor in the College of Sciences, and Director of the Global Change Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology 

Keynote Speaker in the Our Changing Global Environment Symposia's Water Track

Smart Sea Level Sensors

Biography
Kim Cobb’s research uses corals and cave stalagmites to probe the mechanisms of past, present, and future climate change. She received her B.A. from Yale University in 1996, and her PhD in Oceanography from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in 2002. She spent two years at Caltech in the Department of Geological and Planetary Sciences before joining the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2004. 

Cobb has sailed on multiple oceanographic cruises to the deep tropics and led caving expeditions to the rainforests of Borneo in support of her research. Kim has received numerous awards for her research, most notably a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2007, and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2008. She sits on the international CLIVAR Pacific Panel, serves on the Advisory Council for the AAAS Leshner Institute for Public Engagement, and is one of the lead authors on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report. As a mother to four, Kim is a strong advocate for women in science. She is also devoted to the clear and frequent communication of climate change to the public through speaking engagements and social media.

JOSEPH COTRUVO

Joseph Cotruvo is president of Joseph Cotruvo and Associates, Water, Environment and Public Health Consultants in Washington, DC. His PhD is in Physical Organic Chemistry from the Ohio State University. He is Board Certified in Environmental Sciences, and a Research Professor in Chemistry and Environmental Sciences at the University of Toledo. At USEPA he was the first Director of the Drinking Water Standards Division, and Director of the Risk Assessment Division in the Toxic Chemicals program. His Division developed comprehensive national drinking water risk assessments and regulations for microbial contaminants, organic and inorganic chemicals, radionuclides, the original regulations for THM disinfection by-products, surface water filtration, and Lead and Copper corrosion control rules, and initiated EPA’s Drinking Water Health Advisory Program for unregulated contaminants and emergencies. His current advisory work includes the committee producing World Health Organization Guidelines for Drinking Water Quality, and numerous oversight panels on drinking water quality, desalination, and potable water reuse. He served 8 years on the Washington DCWater Board of Directors mostly as Chairman of the Water Quality Committee.  His current work includes lead exposure, legionella assessment and management, bromate water treatment and toxicology, algal toxins, disinfection byproducts and bladder cancer, comprehensive microbial analyses by Next Generation Sequencing, He has over 300 publications, books, presentations and articles on health risk, water quality, policy and safety. He recently received the 2019 Science Award from the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists.

TIM DONOHUE

PETER J. HOTEZ

ASHANTI JOHNSON

ESTHER S. TAKEUCHI

BEN SANTER

2019 William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement Recipient

Plenary Speaker

How a Sentence Changed Climate Science
In November 1995, after three days of deliberations in Madrid’s Palacio de Congresas, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reached the historic finding that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” This sentence changed the world. While other individuals and national scientific organizations had reached similar conclusions before Madrid, the “discernible human influence” statement marked the first time the international climate science community had spoken so clearly and forcefully. My talk reflects on some of the scientific and personal lessons I've learned since publication of the IPCC’s 1995 report. Many of these lessons are still relevant today.

Biography
Ben Santer is an atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He studies natural and human “fingerprints” in observed climate records. His early research contributed to the historic 1995 conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” He served as lead author of a key chapter of that report. Since 1995, Ben has identified human fingerprints in atmospheric temperature and water vapor, ocean heat content, sea surface temperature in hurricane formation regions, and many other climate variables. Read more

ARIANA SUTTON-GRIER

DIETRAM A. SCHEUFELE

JOE PALCA

The role of the journalist is to seek out facts, and then share them with readers, listeners, and viewers. There’s a common belief, however, that many people seem indifferent to facts, or if they use them at all to make decisions, they use them selectively. My talk will explore the question of whether this is really happening, and if it is, what can or should journalists do about it. Palca will also present his thoughts about the future of science communication.