​THE BIO-DIVERSE FESTIVAL 2020 LIVE KEYNOTE TALKS

Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka
Founder and CEO at Conservation Through Public Health

Mitigating the Impact of COVID-19 on Gorilla Conservation

3-4 pm BST, Monday 12th October 2020
Live stream link: https://youtu.be/zEcoVmYlYOY

About: Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is a National Geographic Explorer and Founder and CEO of Conservation Through Public Health (ctph.org). After graduating from Royal Veterinary College, University of London, in 1996, she established Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA)'s first veterinary department. In 2015, she founded Gorilla Conservation Coffee to support farmers living around habitats where gorillas are found. the most recent awards for CTPH and Dr Gladys are the 2020 Saint Andrews Prize for the Environment and the 2020 Aldo Leopold Award for Mammologists.
CTPH is a grassroots NGO and non-profit founded in 2003 that promotes biodiversity conservation by enabling people to co-exist with wildlife through improving animal health, community health and livelihoods in and around Africa's protected areas and wildlife rich habitats. CTPH built upon existing programs implemented through a One Health approach to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. By working with Uganda Wildlife Authority and other NGOs, great ape viewing guidelines were improved to prevent transmission of COVID-19 between people and gorillas. In the absence of tourism, a new distributor in the UK enabled Gorilla Conservation Coffee to buy coffee from farmers around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, reducing their need to poach. Increased poaching led to the killing of a gorilla by a community member hunting duiker and bush pigs. As a result, CTPH resumed supporting reformed poachers and started to provide fast growing seedlings to vulnerable community members. CTPH is advocating for responsible great ape tourism to Governments, donors and tour companies through the Africa CSO Biodiversity Alliance, and for improved animal welfare and reduced destruction of nature through IUCN, UNEP and other platforms.
Professor Duncan Cameron
Co-Director, the Institute for Sustainable Food at the University of Sheffield

From A(berdeen) to Z(aatari) and Back Again, a Soil Microbiologist's Tale.

3-4 pm BST, Tuesday 13th October 2020
Live stream link: https://youtu.be/Z-01xa47hvk

About: Professor Duncan Cameron (professorduncancameron.com) is currently co-Director of the University of Sheffield Flagship Institute for Sustainable Food and a leading expert in sustainable agriculture. In 2013, Duncan won the World Economic Forum Young Scientist award and was recognised as one of the Forum's 40 extraordinary researchers under the age of on 40. In 2015, he addressed the United Nations Paris Climate Conference on soil degradation. Duncan is a Gay Role model at the University of Sheffield and recently hosted Stonewall's regional award ceremony speaking about his experiences of being gay and disabled in STEMM. In this talk, Duncan will explore his research that has tried to understand one of our most complex, poorly understood and unglamorous ecosystems, the soil. He will unpack his academic journey from his PhD research at the University of Aberdeen on grassland soils, via the Paris Climate negotiations to co-creating soil-free agriculture using old mattresses with refugees from the Syrian crisis at Za'atari camp in Jordan. He will share his team's most recent breakthroughs in sustainable agriculture where we have learned about growing food in the hardest of conditions and brought this knowledge home to develop cutting edge approaches for producing food that is sustainable, healthy and fair for all.
Dr Yoselin Benitez-Alfonso
Lecturer in Plant Sciences, School of Biology at the University of Leeds

Overcoming Communication Barriers: A Plant Cell and a Career Pathway

3-4 pm BST, Wednesday 14th October 2020
Live stream link: https://youtu.be/xbEAMnkncHE​

About:  Dr Yoselin Benitez-Alfonso (benitezalfonso.wordpress.com) is Associate Professor at the Centre for Plant Sciences at the University of Leeds, specialising in cell-to-cell communication, plasmodesmata cell walls, plant development and biomaterials. All multicellular organisms need cell and tissue connectivity. Communication coordinates cellular functions within tissues and across distant organs playing a crucial role in organism development and response to the environment. Plant cells are connected by channels named plasmodesmata. Plasmodesmata provide a route for the transport of small and large molecules including signalling proteins and RNAs, metabolites and hormones. The cell walls surrounding plasmodesmata regulate their trafficking capacity and are enriched in the beta-1,3 glucan polysaccharide callose. Benitez-Alfonso's lab have studied the properties and function of callose in the regulation of the channel aperture and identified enzymes that were used as targets to modify its accumulation. These tools allowed them to uncover important biological functions dependent on plasmodesmata effective communication and revealed properties of cell walls that can be exploited in the design of novel approaches for plant biotechnology and biomaterials. Dr Benitez-Alfonso will share how she builds on cross-disciplinary interactions to overcome the challenges of studying these intriguing structures and how, along the way, she has built a career path and a vision that brought her from Cuba and modest origins to becoming Associate Professor at the University of Leeds, UK.
Dr Mika Tosca
Climate Scientist and Assistant Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Reimagining Futures: Collaborations Between Artists, Designers, and Scientists as a Roadmap to Solving the Climate Crisis

3-4 pm BST, Thursday 15th October 2020
Live stream link: https://youtu.be/vG-_POgdCSg​ 

About: Dr Mika Tosca's (micktosca.com) is a trained climate scientist, having completed her PhD in 2012 at the University of California researching the interconnectivity of the climate system with landscape wildfires and their particulate (aerosol) emissions using Earth system models. She continued this work as a postdoctoral scholar at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (a federally-funded NASA research lab) where she used multiple satellite sensors to research the interactions between climate, clouds, and fires, even traveling as far as Namibia in 2016 to observe the complex relationships between wildfire smoke and cloud formation as part of the NASA ORACLES field campaign. In 2017 she took a position as an Assistant Professor at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, and is now investigating whether artists and designers can help scientists conduct and communicate climate science more effectively. In recent decades, despite glaring and increasing evidence of climate change, much of this knowledge remains abstruse, cumbersomely documented, and opaquely presented, making engagement with it by "nonscientists" difficult. There exists, therefore, an exciting and necessary opportunity for scientists to collaborate with artists. We learn that the scientific method begins with a hypothesis, progresses through research and analysis, and concludes with a result. The design process, in contrast, begins with human engagement and inquiry, progresses through ideation and prototyping, and concludes with a refined artifact; similar processes with one glaring difference. Perhaps the revolution we need to address climate change begins by making the human engagement of art-making an integral part of the scientific method. There exists real potential for art and design to dramatically improve the way climate research is conducted and communicated. Echoing the sentiments of the late mother of Afrofuturism, Octavia Butler, we can only have the future we need if we imagine it first, and who better to help us imagine our future than artists.
Sheena Talma
Marine Scientist and Science Program Manager at Nekton

Above and Below Water: A Recount of Two Expeditions that Set Out to Generate New Knowledge on Plastic Pollution on Aldabra and a Dive to 300 m in Seychelles Waters.

3-4 pm BST, Friday 16th October 2020
Live stream link: https://youtu.be/pqbg07tKDrA​

About: Sheena Talma is an early career researcher from Seychelles in the field of Marine Science, currently working as the Science Program Manager at Nekton Foundation (nektonmission.org). She has a post-graduate degree in fisheries and ichthyology, and has worked for the Ministry of Environment Energy and Climate Change in Seychelles. Sheena has experience working with policymakers and governments, as well as the hospitality industry and wildlife educational programs. She is a strong advocate for transdisciplinary, co-produced and inclusive science. Sheena has a keen interest in learning more about the dynamics and relationship between people and the ocean, and is particularly interested in how these dynamics change with the growing symptoms of climate change, overfishing, exploitation and pollution.  In this talk, follow a tale of two expeditions, from sandy shores of the Aldabra atoll to 300 m below its surface. Sheena will recount her experience and provide an overview of the science program conducted during the Aldabra Clean-Up Project and the Nekton Expedition: First Descent.

More Information and Tickets: Get your ticket here to get any updates about this talk and the live stream link before the event: bdf20-talma.eventbrite.co.uk
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