By Marjorie Kaplan
On November 13, 2024, researchers, faculty, and student scholars from academic and research institutions across the Mid-Atlantic came together for Rutgers annual Climate Symposium which is designed to foster collaboration among the climate change and energy research community in our region.
Denise Hien, Senior Vice Provost for Research, Rutgers University – New Brunswick welcomed the full house of in-person attendees as well as those watching the livestream, noting “climate change affects all sectors of society” and that at Rutgers, we are “bridging our research and education across subjects and sectors for addressing these wicked problems.”
The 2024 theme, Signals – Climate Change for Understanding and Action is “a way to explore the signs we can take from the climate system, from energy systems, from traditional knowledge, and from the ways in which we communicate about climate change to help us better tackle it,” explained RCEI Director Julie Lockwood. Experts featured during the morning plenary who spoke to these signals included:
- Katherine Blunt, Author and Journalist
- William Hallman, Distinguished Professor of Human Ecology, Rutgers University
- Benjamin Santer, Atmospheric Scientist, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute & University of California at Los Angeles
- Julia Watson, Landscape Designer, Julia Watson LLC & Lo-TEK Institute
A dynamic and lively afternoon poster session provided opportunities for sharing scholarly work on climate change and energy by researchers from throughout the Mid-Atlantic Region. As one graduate student noted, “The RCEI Symposium provided me with the ability to meet potential collaborators across other disciplines who I wouldn’t have met otherwise.”
RCEI’s annual climate symposium is an event that is free to attendees. It is supported in part by the Frank Sposato Memorial Endowment.
Recordings of the presentations as well as the posters can be found here.
