MIT Portugal Climate Workshop

We were honored to host three esteemed faculty members from Portugal for this event: Prof. Paulo Ferrão (IST), Prof.  Frederico Ferreira (IST), and Prof. Paula Ferreira (University of Minho). The “mini-workshop” was designed to bring together faculty, researchers and industry pioneers who are all working in different areas of climate science for an exchange of knowledge. Five invited speakers shared brief updates on their areas of work and research:

• Dr. Chris Hill (MIT, EAPS): “Modeling Ocean Circulation and Color for Climate”
• Cyrill Gutsch (Founder of Parley for the Oceans): “Fashion Design in the Age of Climate Change”
• Prof. Dara Entekhabi (MIT, EAPS): “Surface Climate at Tipping Points: Mapping and Detection of Transitions in Surface Water, Energy and Carbon Balances”
• Björn Lütjens (MIT PhD Student, EarthDNA): “Creating a Cognitive Earth Platform: from Oceans to Air to Space” 
• Prof. John Reilly (Co-Director, Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, MIT): “Advancing a Sustainable, Prosperous World Through Scientific Analysis of the Complex Interactions Among Co-evolving, Interconnected Global Systems”

During the last hour, the 25 participants discussed the topic: “What are the climate research questions that we can tie into the future of MIT Portugal?” The most of the group attended the MIT Climate Symposia, Economy-wide Deep Decarbonization: Beyond Electricity. If you missed this event, you can find recordings here.

The conversation about Climate continued into the next day when Prof. Paulo Ferrão, former president of Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), shared his research updates and views on the European Green Deal. He spoke about a unified framework for analyzing urban sustainability in terms of cities’ inflows and outflows of matter and energy with a focus on building renovation. 

Thank you to all of our guests and MIT Portugal community members who participated this past week.