The Complexity of Sustainability and Investing Speakers
From Santa Fe Institute Events Wiki
SFI ACtioN Virtual Topical Meeting
May 27-28, 2020
Co-sponsored by ACtioN member Putnam Investments
Speakers Include:
Putnam Investments and Santa Fe Institute
Katherine Collins is Head of Sustainable Investing at Putnam Investments and Portfolio Manager for Putnam’s Sustainable Leaders and Sustainable Future strategies, with over $5 billion in assets under management. She also serves as Vice Chair of the Santa Fe Institute Board of Trustees.
A recognized thought leader, Ms. Collins is the author of The Nature of Investing and founder of Honeybee Capital, an independent investment research firm focused on sustainable investment themes. Earlier in her career, she served as Head of Equity Research, Portfolio Manager, and Equity Research Analyst at Fidelity Investments.
Katherine serves on numerous boards, including Last Mile Health, Omega Institute, and Harvard Divinity School Dean’s Council. She earned a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and a B.A. from Wellesley College, and is a CFA charter holder. Her closest neighbors in Massachusetts are thousands of honeybees.
Princeton University and Santa Fe Institute
Simon Levin is the George M. Moffett Professor of Biology and Director of the Center for BioComplexity at Princeton University and the co-chair of the Science Board at the Santa Fe Institute. He retains an Adjunct Professorship at Cornell. His research interests are in understanding how macroscopic patterns and processes are maintained at the level of ecosystems and the biosphere, in terms of ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that operate primarily at the level of organisms; in infectious diseases; and in the interface between basic and applied ecology.
Levin is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science as well as a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He Chairs the Governing Council for IIASA. Levin is a former President of the Ecological Society of America and the Society for Mathematical Biology, and a past Chair of the Board of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics.
Among other awards, he won the MacArthur Award (1988) and the Distinguished Service Citation (1998) of the Ecological Society of America, and the Okubo Award of the Society for Mathematical Biology and the Japanese Society for Theoretical Biology. Most recently, he was honored with the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2004), the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences (2005) by the Inamori Foundation, and the Distinguished Scientist Award of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. Levin has mentored more than 100 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
Harvard University and Santa Fe Institute
Daniel Schrag is the Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology at Harvard University, Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering, Director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, SFI Science Board Co-chair, and member of SFI's Science Steering Committee.
Schrag studies climate and climate change over the broadest range of Earth history. He is particularly interested in how information on climate change from the geologic past can lead to better understanding of anthropogenic climate change in the future. In addition to his work on geochemistry and climatology, Schrag studies energy technology and policy, including carbon capture and storage and low-carbon synthetic fuels.
Among various honors, Schrag is the recipient of the James B. Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union and a MacArthur Fellowship. Schrag earned a B.S. in geology and geophysics and political science from Yale University and his Ph.D. in geology from the University of California at Berkeley. He came to Harvard in 1997 after teaching at Princeton, and he served on President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Santa Fe Institute
Jessika Trancik is an Associate Professor in the Institute for Data, Systems and Society (IDSS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. She received her B.S. in materials science and engineering from Cornell University and her Ph.D. in materials science from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Before MIT, she spent several years at the Santa Fe Institute as an Omidyar Fellow, and at Columbia University as an Earth Institute Fellow, where her research focused on energy systems modeling. Her research group studies the dynamic costs and environmental impacts of energy technologies to inform technology design and policy.