Jamie is the co-Founder of RethinkX, a not-for-profit think tank that analyzes and forecasts technology disruptions and their impact on society, using a complex systems-based framework. He is co-author of the book Rethinking Humanity. He is also the founder of Tellus Mater, a grant-making foundation that supports work on issues related to sustainability, with a focus on the finance system. Jamie is Chairman of a family office based in London and specializes in clean tech venture capital. He has a History degree and a Masters in Sustainability Leadership from Trinity College, Cambridge.

Patrick O. Brown, MD, PhD is an emeritus professor at Stanford University and founder of Impossible Foods, a company whose mission is to replace the use of animals in the global food system. Dr. Brown founded Impossible Foods in 2011, when he recognized that the only way to avert catastrophic climate change and the global collapse of biodiversity was to replace the most destructive technology in human history – animal agriculture. He saw that this goal could be achieved by inventing a new technology platform that would enable the most delicious, nutritious, affordable and sustainable meats in the world to be made directly from plants. Dr. Brown received his BA, MD and PhD at the University of Chicago and completed a residency in pediatrics at Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital. As a post-doctoral fellow with Mike Bishop and Harold Varmus, he defined the mechanism by which HIV and other retroviruses incorporate their genes into the genomes of the cells they infect. He then joined the Biochemistry faculty at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. At Stanford, Pat and colleagues invented the DNA microarray – a new technology that made it possible to monitor the activity of all the genes in a genome – along with the first methods for analyzing, visualizing and interpreting global gene expression programs. This technology opened a window on the genetic programs that specify the characteristics and behaviors of cells and tissues. He and his colleagues then pioneered the use of gene expression patterns to classify cancers and improve prediction of their clinical course. Pat has also been a pioneer in open-access publishing. With Harold Varmus and Michael Eisen, he founded the Public Library of Science, a nonprofit scientific publisher that has transformed the publishing industry by making scientific and medical research results freely available to the public. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine. and recipient of the National Academy of Sciences award in Molecular Biology, American Cancer Society Medal of Honor and the Takeda Award. He has published more than 240 scientific articles.

Amanda Byrd is a geospatial analyst at Dewberry with a passion for supply chain logistics and emergency management. She is a graduate of Penn State’s Geography program. Her experience includes the analysis of existing food supply chain information sharing platforms in the Metropolitan Washington Region. Ms. Byrd also recently supported the response to Hurricane Ian with grocery supply chain resilience analysis via FEMA’s Supply Chain Analysis Network. She is excited to discuss the intersections of food and data sharing, and their role in shaping a more resilient planet.

Dr. Chen is director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), a part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York. He also manages the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), a unique source of interdisciplinary, open access geospatial data and information focused on human-environment interactions. He recently served on the United Nations Independent Expert Advisory Group on the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development, and helped to develop the innovative immersive exhibit, Connected Worlds, at the New York Hall of Science. He received his PhD in Geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holds Masters degrees in Technology and Policy and in Meteorology and Physical Oceanography from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His undergraduate degree was in Earth and Planetary Sciences at MIT.

Dr. Xiang "Peter" Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Connecticut, USA. He received his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree at Beijing Normal University, China, and earned a Ph.D. in geography at The Ohio State University. His research interests are focused on GIScience and community health. He employs GIS instruments and big data analytics to unveil the socioeconomic and health inequalities across urban communities. His topical area is food access, evaluating if community members have equitable access to healthy, affordable food provisioning. His latest project employs a deep learning model for deriving the nutritional information of restaurant from food images, which portrays the nutrition foodscape in Hartford, CT.

Mariah Ehmke is a research agricultural economist at the United States Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (USDA-ERS). Her research program focuses on the economics of obesity. Her current work focuses on obesity-related health disparities, nutrition security in America, and household economic decisions. She is currently serving on the federal government’s interagency committee to develop the 2025 United States dietary guidelines. Her past work includes peer-reviewed research on cultural differences in economic behavior, agricultural and environmental management decisions, food policy, and nutrition information use. She has been recognized by the American Agricultural and Applied Economics Association with the President’s award for service to the profession. She taught university courses on consumer economics, entrepreneurship, agribusiness marketing, international trade, and world food policy at the University of Wyoming prior to joining USDA-ERS. Ehmke completed her doctorate at Purdue University. There she was a USDA Needs Fellow and AAUW American Fellow. She also holds a M.Sc. in Agricultural Economics from The Ohio State University and B.Sc. of Human Ecology from Kansas State University. She was a New Zealand Home Science Association Scholar to the University of Otago.

My name is Amin M. Elamin, and I am a second-year Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, College Park, Department of Geographical Sciences. My research interests exist at the interface of human-environmental interactions, sustainable development, and natural resource management/governance, with particular interest in the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus. Through my work, I hope to develop new understandings, models, and solutions related to climate resilience and adaptation by leveraging mixed-methods research. I am originally from Sudan, and in my free time, I enjoy urban photography, binge-watching documentaries, and community service work. My advisor is Dr. Meredith L. Gore.

Maria Fadiman is a professor in the department of Geosciences at Florida Atlantic University, 2006 National Geographic Emerging Explorer, two times TEDx speaker and a fellow in the Explorers Club. She researches the human/environmental aspect of conservation, focusing on ethnobotany (the relationship between people and plants), working primarily in rural areas throughout the globe. In addition to her scholarly publications, she is one of the invited contributors to the book, Global Chorus along with Jane Goodall and the Dalai Lama, among others, National Geographic’s Survival Manual, the book No More Endlings and in the Voices section of the American Way Magazine. She was featured on Into the Wild and on the National Geographic International Channel for Earth Day. She has her quote printed on a Starbuck’s cup, and was selected to be one of Vassar College’s “Famous Alumni.” She has been a mentor with National Geographic, an expert on their Travel Expeditions, been featured in science and language textbooks, and was chosen as a “Scientific Hero” at Good Shepherd School. She enjoys science communication and has presented throughout the United States and across the globe at universities and public venues.

Dr. Michael Ferrari is the Chief Scientific Officer and Chief Commercial Officer for Climate Alpha. Michael built and led data science teams at several global organizations including Engine No.1, Syngenta, Point72 Asset Management, IBM, Mars, and the Coca-Cola Company, as well as with several startups in the technology, fintech, and commodity sectors. Most of his work sits at the agriculture-water-energy-infrastructure nexus. Michael has spent two decades as a scientist, engineer, and economist in a wide variety of sectors with direct applications for the Climate Alpha engagement strategy. He has been an affiliate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the MIT Media Lab, and he is also a senior fellow at the Wharton School.

Abigail Fitzgibbon is a product engineer at Esri, a world leader in geospatial information software. On the ArcGIS Living Atlas environment team, her work focuses on climate change risk and agriculture. She is also a recent graduate of UCLA with research interests in climate, food security, and conflict.

Laura Geller is the Agricultural Attaché covering Ukraine and Moldova for the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine. She evacuated from Kyiv shortly before Russia invaded and is now in DC but continues to work with her team in Kyiv daily. Prior to her posting to Ukraine, Ms. Geller was the Senior Agricultural Attaché based in Pretoria, South Africa, covering 11 countries in the region. She also served as the Agricultural Attaché in Brasilia, Brazil from 2013 to 2017. Ms. Geller holds a master’s degree in International Development from the University of Pittsburgh and a bachelor’s in Political Science from Ohio University and is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Russia 2001-2002). Ms. Geller has been with FAS since 2007.

Dr. Phoebe Godfrey is a Full Professor-in-Residence in Sociology at UCONN and her focus is on the intersections of identity, society and natural world. She teaches courses on Society and Climate Change, Sustainable Societies, Social Theory, Sociology of Food, Sociology of Education and many others but in all, her focus is on engaging students in order to help them explore their potentials. She the co-editor of a two-volume reader – Systemic Crises of Global Climate Change: Intersections of Race, Class and Gender and Emergent Possibilities for Global Sustainability Intersections of Race, Class and Gender, Routledge 2016. More recently, she is also the co-editor of Global [Im]-Possibilities: Exploring The Paradoxes of Just Sustainabilities, Bloomsbury Press, 2021 and author of Understanding Just Sustianabilities: A Case Study of a Share-Use Kitchen in Connecticut, Routledge, 2021. She is the co-founder (with her wife Tina Shirshac) of the non-profit CLiCK (Commercially Licensed Co-operative Kitchen) in Windham that is an incubator for local food businesses. She considers her teaching and non-profit work as central to her commitment to social and ecological justice.

Meredith L. Gore is an Associate Professor of Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change in the Department of Geographical Sciences at University of Maryland, College Park. Her research uses risk concepts to build new understanding of human-environment relationships and is designed to build scientific evidence for action. The majority of her activities can be described as convergence research on conservation issues such as wildlife trafficking, illegal logging, fishing and mining. Meredith has conducted research in collaboration with local communities in 15 countries on 5 continents with funding from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Michigan Department of Natural Resources, DEFRA, Global Wildlife Conservation and others. Her website hosts voluntary, consensus-based and open-access GIS standards to combat wildlife trafficking. In 2016-2017, she served in-residence at the U.S. Department of State Office of the Geographer and Global Issues as a National Academies of Sciences Jefferson Science Fellow. Meredith has continued to provide senior science advising to the State Department on conservation crime as an Intelligence Research Expert; she has advised the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Office of Wildlife and Forest Crime, the African Union Commissions’ Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture, Wildlife Conservation Society’s Urban Bushmeat Team, and Michigan Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Division. Dr. Gore has published over 75 referred journal articles and book chapters and currently serves as an Associate Editor for Global Ecology and Conservation. She is the Editor and author of Conservation Criminology (2017, WileyBlackwell), and her co-edited volume Women and Wildlife Trafficking (WileyBlackwell) is expected in early 2022. Meredith earned her PhD at Cornell University, MA at The George Washington University, and BA at Brandeis University.

I am a geographer interested on landscape change. In particular, I do research on how agricultural production systems transform landscapes, and how telecouplings for commodities such as coffee have shaped local land-use systems. I am also interested on climate change and biodiversity loss processes worldwide. I have been involved in global environmental assessments (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, IPBES, Global Environment Outlook) as a fellow, author and reviewer. I am a professor at Universidad de los Andes, in Bogota, Colombia.

National Geographic Explorer Victoria Herrmann works with communities across the world on adapting cultural heritage to climate change impacts. Victoria is an Assistant Research Professor at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at The Arctic Institute, a nonprofit with a mission to inform policy for a just, sustainable, and secure Arctic. For six years, Victoria served as the Managing Director of The Arctic Institute, where she directed strategic planning and oversaw the implementation of global research partnerships by a 45-person team. As a recognized expert in the field, Victoria has testified before the House and Senate, served as the Alaska Review Editor for the National Climate Assessment, and contributed to national and international media. At Georgetown, she serves as the Principal Investigator of a National Science Foundation-funded Research Coordination Network on Arctic migrations. The three-year initiative aims to build a lasting, policy-oriented network of Arctic scientists to strengthen communication between nations and scientific disciplines. Victoria recently completed a year-long White House Fellowship and was a Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Fulbright Awardee to Canada, and a Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellow at the National Academies of Sciences. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar.

Rini Indrayanti is currently the National Platform Manager of Indonesia's UNDP Sustainable Palm Oil Initiative (SPOI) project. Rini has over 20 years of experience in various development programs focusing on sustainable agriculture, post-conflict, and post-disaster recovery. Her expertise is multi-stakeholders dialogue and collaboration to create joint actions to tackle agricultural sustainable development issues in Indonesia. She has a bachelor’s degree in management from Hasanuddin University and a Master’s in Development Practice (Adv.) from the University of Queensland, Australia.

Dr. Molly Jahn joined DARPA as a program manager in the Defense Sciences Office in January 2021 on an Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) assignment from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her current research interests focus on leveraging advances in biochemistry and complexity to improving resiliency in critical U.S. infrastructure and supply chains.

Jahn previously led research groups at Cornell University and UW-Madison where she also served as dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, leading a successful bid for a Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Center. She has served as deputy and acting Under Secretary of Research, Education and Economics at the Department of Agriculture.

In the past five years, Jahn held guest appointments at the Naval War College in the Ethics of Emerging Technologies program, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory where she chaired the scientific advisory board for the Energy and Environmental Sciences Directorate in addition to serving on the laboratory director’s advisory committee. She also led a cooperative research and development agreement with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and was contracted by NASA headquarters’ Earth Sciences Directorate to build bridges to the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community.

Jahn received her doctorate in plant genetics from Cornell University and honorary doctorates from Swarthmore College and Anglia Ruskin University. She also holds a Master of Science in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Arts with distinction from Swarthmore College.