Advancing Vital Biodiversity Data Tools

Wednesday, April 15 | 1:30 – 5:30 PM | Location: Cambridge Innovation Center, Santo Domingo Room

This workshop brings together corporate sustainability leaders and MIT researchers to examine emerging tools for producing and using ecosystem data. Participants will learn how peers across sectors are developing data strategies that meet changing expectations for biodiversity actions and decision-making. Design-led activities offer hands-on experimentation with new visualization formats and future platform concepts that can make ecosystem data more actionable and communicable. Attendees will leave with insights to inform their own biodiversity strategies and help shape new data tools that respond to industry needs and are grounded in MIT’s emerging research.

Facilitators:

• Michelle Westerlaken, Impact Fellow, MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium (MCSC)
• Liana Frey, Managing Director, MIT Climate Project
• Alison Rufo, Undergraduate Researcher, MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium (MCSC)

Featured Speakers:

• Alex Killion, Chief Strategy Advisor, Map of Life (Yale University)
• Rakhi Kumar, Senior Vice President, Sustainability Solutions & Business Integration, Liberty Mutual
• Sarah Williams, Associate Professor of Technology and Urban Planning, Director of the Civic Data Design Lab at MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning
• Rupa Kurinchi-Vendhan, PhD Student at MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (Supervised by Prof. Sara Beery)
• Gökçen Erkilic, data artist, designer, educator, postdoctoral fellow, and founder of Coastliner Lab (CLLab), Northeastern University, College of Art Media and Design
• Martina Mazzarello, Senior Postdoctoral Researcher & Deniz Aydemir, Research Assistant at MIT’s Senseable City Lab