ECTN lecture

On Thursday 13 April, the European Chemistry Thematic Network (ECTN) congress begins at Science Park. Before it begins, this exclusive congress will offer a lecture for students from 5 to 6 pm in C0.110. This lecture will be given by Peter Mahaffy, chemistry professor at The King’s University in Edmonton, Canada and Director of King’s Centre for Visualisation in Science.
The title of the lecture is “Chemistry’s Contributions to the Sustainability Landscape: Why our Planet Needs Systems Thinking Chemists, Educators, and Citizens”. Further information can be found below. The lecture is open to all.

Chemistry’s Contributions to the Sustainability Landscape: Why our Planet Needs Systems Thinking Chemists, Educators, and Citizens

Chemistry, the science of transformation of matter, has a central role to play in building a sustainable future for our planet. This includes addressing the unintended sustainability challenges that arise from the large-scale material transformation by humans over the past fifty years. What contributions are chemistry and chemistry education making toward sustainability goals, and in what new ways can chemistry educators begin with the molecular basis of sustainability and integrate sustainability orientations, tools and frameworks into teaching and learning? We take a systems approach to this question and draw on the chemistry of refrigerants and reactive nitrogen to illustrate how our profession can transform itself through systems thinking to better contribute at multiple levels toward the emergence of sustainability of the Earth system. We will also explore an interactive learning tool recently released by our King’s Centre for Visualization in Science (kcvs.ca) in collaboration with an IUPAC project, that uses the Planetary Boundaries framework (Stockholm Resilience Centre) to connect fundamental chemistry concepts and measurements to sustainability challenges and opportunities.