Past Events
April 14, 2009
Prof. John Sterman of the MIT Sloan School of Management will describe and demonstrate the Climate-Rapid Overview and Decision Support Simulator (C-ROADS), a user-friendly, interactive computer model of the climate system. The model has been tested against and is consistent with a wide range of large-scale climate and coupled climate/carbon-cycle models across a wide range of scenarios, yet runs quickly enough to be used in the context of real-time climate negotiations and briefings.
April 14, 2009
Prof. Arun Majumdar of the University of California, Berkeley, will present a seminar in the MITEI series. Abstract: To address the challenges of energy security and climate change, it is becoming increasingly clear that "business as usual" traditional approaches to decarbonize the energy supply and to reduce energy demand are inadequate. We need to create an era of major innovations in energy conversion, storage and end-use technology that are not only efficient, but are also scalable and cost-effective.
April 13, 2009
In this Starr Forum, speaker Bill McKibben will be calling on MIT students to join the Global Campaign to Save the Planet. Abstract: Science has given us, in the last 18 months, a real bottom line for the planet: a CO2 concentration above which, as NASA's Jim Hansen has put it, we can't maintain the "planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life is adapted." We need a movement to get that scientific truth across to as many folks as possible.
April 13, 2009
Dr. John Van Reenen of the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics, CEPR and NBER, will present work with Nicholas Bloom of Stanford and Mirko Draca of LSE. Abstract: There is a popular belief that Chinese imports have devastated US and European manufacturing and contributed to rising inequality. Somewhat paradoxically, the consensus amongst empirical economists is that trade has not been a major cause of rising wage inequality (although this is largely based on datasets predating China’s rise).
April 13, 2009
Dr. Panos Parpas of Credit Suisse will present a seminar in the Engineering Systems Division. Abstract: Most decision models contain some element of uncertainty, either because some important parameters affecting the decision are unknown (e.g. consumer demand for a particular product) or due to model risk (e.g. unobservable parameters of a mathematical model describing a physical process). These situations can be handled within the framework of stochastic programming, optimal control, chance constrained and robust optimization.
April 13, 2009
Dr. Noelle Eckley Selin of the MIT Global Change Joint Program will speak in the MIT Atmospheric Science Seminar Series. Abstract: Concern about the human impacts of air pollution has prompted efforts to regulate emissions in both national and international policy arenas. A substantial challenge for scientists is identifying the pathways from emissions to human impacts in ways that are useful for policy decision making.