Thursday, March 26th
More than two billion people globally suffer from micronutrient deficiencies, and several USDA studies show that there have been significant declines in essential nutrients in a number of food crops over the past 50 years, as the juggernaut of industrialized agriculture has swept the globe. Fortunately, emerging research is finding that healthy farm soils increase the nutrient density of plants, which implies that authentic regenerative farming practices, along with their many benefits to farmers and ecosystems, can reverse that degenerative 50-year trend and help us create a genuinely healthy food system. With: Mary Purdy of the Nutrient Density Alliance and Dan Kittredge of the Bionutrient Food Association. Moderated by Arty Mangan, Director of the Bioneers Restorative Food Systems program.
March 26th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm
Panelists
Mary Purdy
Managing Director | Nutrient Density Initiative
Mary Purdy, MS, RDN, an integrative eco-dietitian, working at the intersection of sustainable food systems and climate and human health, spent 13+ years in clinical practice, taught for 8 years at Bastyr University in Seattle, and is currently Managing Director of the Nutrient Density Initiative that works to connect the dots between soil health and nutrient-rich food. Also on the adjunct faculty at The Culinary Institute of America's Master’s Program in Sustainable Food Systems, she speaks widely on nutrition, sustainability and regenerative agriculture. With 130+ podcast episodes and two books under her belt, Mary is a leading voice on how to foster resilient, just, and healthy food systems.
Arty Mangan
Restorative Food Systems Director | Bioneers
Arty Mangan, Director of the Bioneers Restorative Food Systems program, worked as farm worker and local food entrepreneur. He has also worked with Indigenous farmers growing traditional crops and with Black farmers developing ecological agricultural trainings. His current focus is on the intersection of climate and regenerative agriculture. Mangan is a former board president of the Ecological Farming Association.
Dan Kittredge
Executive Director | Bionutrient Food Association
Bio coming soon.
Friday, March 27th
Renowned science fiction author, activist and journalist Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” in 2022 to describe the degradation of online platforms. Today, he will draw from his most recent nonfiction book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, to assure us that it’s not our imaginations: the internet does indeed suck now. And this isn’t the result of great historical forces or iron laws of economics: it’s caused by specific policy choices made in living memory by named individuals, but Cory will argue that we aren’t helpless prisoners of the depraved foolishness of early 21st century policymakers. We can – and we must – break free of the prison they built for us, consigning their terrible ideas to the scrap-heap of history, so we can create a new, good internet that is fit to serve as the digital nervous system of this fraught young century.
March 27th | 11:45 am to 12:05 pm | Zellerbach Hall
Cory Doctorow
Technology Journalist and Science Fiction Author
Cory Doctorow, a renowned, award-winning science fiction author, activist, and journalist, is the author of dozens of books, most recently, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, (nonfiction); and the novels Picks and Shovels and The Bezzle. His other notable books include the “solar-punk” novels Walkaway and The Lost Cause, and the tech policy books The Internet Con and Chokepoint Capitalism. Cory also: maintains a daily blog at Pluralistic.net; works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and is: an AD White Professor at Cornell University; an MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate; a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University; a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science; and a co-founder of the UK Open Rights Group.
Saturday, March 28th
John Warner, one of the co-founders of the entire field of “Green Chemistry” who co-authored its defining text and co-articulated its core principles, works to create commercial technologies inspired by nature. An inventor with over 300 patents who has received countless prestigious awards, he has also been, with his wife, Amy Cannon, a thought leader and prime mover of green chemistry education. In this talk, he will share his vision of how we can draw from the molecular design genius of nature, which has been running countless rigorous chemistry experiments for nearly 4 billion years, to create benign products and technologies that provide for human needs without contaminating the biosphere and endangering our health.
March 28th | 9:40 am to 10:02 am | Zellerbach Hall
John Warner
Inventor and Co-Founder of the Field of Green Chemistry
John Warner, Ph.D., one of the founders of the field of Green Chemistry who co-authored its defining text “Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice” (with Paul Anastas), is a chemistry inventor and entrepreneur who works to create commercial technologies inspired by nature consistent with the principles of green chemistry. He holds over 350 industrial chemistry patents, and his inventions have served as the basis for several new companies in photovoltaics, neurochemistry, construction materials, water harvesting, and cosmetics. John, who has received many prestigious awards from within the chemistry industry, government, academia and civil society organizations, has had a distinguished academic career, including as a tenured full-professor at UMASS Boston and Lowell. In 2007 he co-founded (with Amy Cannon) Beyond Benign, a non-profit dedicated to sustainability and green chemistry education. He holds academic appointments at Monash University in Australia, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, Somaiya University in India, University of Birmingham in the UK, Rochester Institute of Technology in the US, and Technical University of Berlin in Germany where they have named the “John Warner Center for Start Ups in Green Chemistry.” John also currently serves as CEO and CTO of Technology Greenhouse.
Chemistry underpins 96% of all manufactured goods, but most materials and products are designed using processes that generate excess waste, rely on hazardous substances, generate carbon emissions, and cause long-term damage to human and environmental health. The root cause is upstream: sustainability has not been prioritized in the design of chemical and material products. Our educational systems need to be transformed to prepare chemists and scientists to design more sustainable products. John Warner, world-renowned inventor of green chemistry technologies, and Amy Cannon, a leading voice for systemic change in chemistry education will share their work on such key initiatives as the Green Chemistry Commitment, which equips universities to integrate green chemistry across curricula, research and training. These initiatives and more are enabling a new generation of scientists to create breakthrough technologies that will enable a more sustainable, circular and regenerative economy and society.
March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm
Panelists
John Warner
Inventor and Co-Founder of the Field of Green Chemistry
John Warner, Ph.D., one of the founders of the field of Green Chemistry who co-authored its defining text “Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice” (with Paul Anastas), is a chemistry inventor and entrepreneur who works to create commercial technologies inspired by nature consistent with the principles of green chemistry. He holds over 350 industrial chemistry patents, and his inventions have served as the basis for several new companies in photovoltaics, neurochemistry, construction materials, water harvesting, and cosmetics. John, who has received many prestigious awards from within the chemistry industry, government, academia and civil society organizations, has had a distinguished academic career, including as a tenured full-professor at UMASS Boston and Lowell. In 2007 he co-founded (with Amy Cannon) Beyond Benign, a non-profit dedicated to sustainability and green chemistry education. He holds academic appointments at Monash University in Australia, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, Somaiya University in India, University of Birmingham in the UK, Rochester Institute of Technology in the US, and Technical University of Berlin in Germany where they have named the “John Warner Center for Start Ups in Green Chemistry.” John also currently serves as CEO and CTO of Technology Greenhouse.
Amy Cannon
Co-Founder and Executive Director | Beyond Benign
Amy Cannon, Ph.D., co-founder and Executive Director of Beyond Benign, a global non-profit dedicated to green chemistry education, was the world’s first person to earn a doctorate in green chemistry and is a leading voice for systemic change in chemistry education to better prepare students and scientists to address global sustainability challenges. Prior to founding Beyond Benign, Amy worked in industry, including for Gillette and Rohm and Haas, and was an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Amy is also very active in community-based work, including the global higher education program, the Green Chemistry Commitment, comprised of over 260 Universities worldwide; and the on-line teaching and learning community platform, the Green Chemistry Teaching and Learning Community (GCTLC).
