Plenary sessions
We are very pleased to announce an exciting plenary session line-up of keynote and invited speakers. Each session will consist of a 30 minute keynote, followed by three 15 minute invited talks then a Q&A session.
Wednesday 6th September
Professor Yadvinder Malhi CBE FRS, Oxford University
Yadvinder Malhi is an ecosystem ecologist who has advanced our understanding of the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems and how they are responding to the pressures of global change, including climate change, degradation and loss of large animals. This work integrates insights from ecosystem ecology into Earth System science, and has been characterised by a multidisciplinary approach that involves establishing broad networks of field research in tropical forests in some of the most remote and challenging regions of the world, and also application of micrometeorological approaches, global climate datasets, terrestrial ecosystem models and satellite remote sensing. This work has contributed to our understanding of the carbon sink in the terrestrial biosphere, and to how it may be vulnerable to climate warming.
Invited talks:
Laura Duncanson (UMD)
Tomasso Jucker (University of Bristol)
Atticus Stovall (NASA)
Session chair: Prof. Mathias Disney (UCL)
Thursday 7th September
Andy Waddington, Vice President – Bathymetric Solutions, Hexagon Geosystems
Andy Waddington, Vice President of bathymetric services at Hexagon, is a hydrographer and an experienced mariner with a long career in surveying at sea. He started his career in hydrography in the Royal Navy, UK, where he was originally trained in singlebeam echosounders, electronic positioning and horizontal sextant angling in the days before GNSS. During his 25 years in the Royal Navy he was active in the transition to multibeam echosounders, the universal adoption of GNSS as the primary positioning system and the introduction of ROVs as a major survey tool. Over the past ten years he has turned his attention towards other emerging survey techniques and has been involved in the development and operation of bathymetric LiDAR, satellite-derived bathymetry and unmanned surface vessels. Andy Waddington has a BSc in Systems and Management and an MSc in GIS, and is a Chartered Marine Scientist, a Fellow of the IMarEst, a Member of the Chartered Institute of Civil Engineering Surveyors and an Associate Fellow of the Marine Institute.
Invited talks:
Joanne White (Canadian Forest Service)
Naikoa Aguilar-Amuchastegui (World Bank)
Erik Lindquist (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization)
Session chair: Dr. Andy Burt (Sylvera Carbon)
Friday 8th September
Professor Kate Jones, UCL
Kate Jones, Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity at University College London, is an ecologist whose interdisciplinary research investigates the interface of ecological and human health. Her research understands the impact of global land use and climate change on ecological and human systems, with a particular focus on emerging infectious diseases from animals. Kate’s work also focuses on generating better tools for monitoring the status of wildlife populations, developing some of the first applied artificial intelligence tools for monitoring biodiversity, and further understanding how citizen science data can be used to understand biodiversity trends. Kate is the Director of The People and Nature Lab at UCL’s new cross-disciplinary campus in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (UCL East). She has written over 150 articles and book chapters in prestigious journals, is a UK government scientific advisor, chaired The Bat Conservation Trust for 5 years, and served as an expert advisor to the UK’s Climate Change Committee. Kate won the Leverhulme Prize for outstanding contributions to Zoology in 2008, and in 2022 won both ZSL’s Marsh Award for Conservation Biology and British Ecology Society’s Marsh Award for Ecology.
Invited talks:
Aline Bornand (Scientific Service NFI, Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL)
Matt Allen (University of Cambridge)
Mika Pehkonen (University of Helsinki)
Session chairs: Dr. Emily Lines (University of Cambridge) and Dr. Stefan Puliti (Norwegian Institute for Bio-economy Research)