̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - World Economic Forum

Farm to factories

plc32 — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 16:51:02 +0000

Cambridge Zero collaborates with Cambridge Global Food Security Interdisciplinary Research Centre (IRC) and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Decarbonisation Network for two research events in March 2024 that look at industry decarbonisation and food security.

Cambridge-led team developing a simulator to help reach net zero flight

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 08:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��simulator will capture the whole aviation sector, from the sources of renewable electricity and raw materials to the production and transport of fuel, and the introduction of new aircraft technologies and operations. Leaders in industry and government will gain an understanding of the potential for change and the trade-offs between decisions. ̽��ֱ��simulator will guide innovation, investment and policy action, and provide educational benefits.

̽��ֱ��AIA is led by the Whittle Laboratory and the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL). “Achieving an aviation sector with no climate impact is one of society’s biggest challenges,” said Professor Rob Miller, Director of the Whittle Laboratory and co-lead of the project. “Solving it will require a complex combination of technology, business, human behaviour and policy. We have assembled a world-class team of academics and industry experts to take on this challenge.”

Users of the simulator will be able to simulate future scenarios to 2050 and calculate the resource requirements, such as renewable electricity and land use, the climate impact, both CO₂ and non-CO₂, and the cost of flying.

Options include the type of energy used, such as hydrogen, batteries and a range of sustainable aviation fuels, the type of aircraft and aircraft technologies, the way in which aircraft are operated, and the value judgments made by the public and government. ̽��ֱ��simulator will take a whole system approach – from the source of the electricity to the methods of fuel production and transport – to the passenger journey.

“International travel helps people and societies connect,” said Clare Shine, Director of CISL. “To retain this opportunity for future generations, we must urgently address aviation’s environmental impact as part of systemic decarbonisation of the economy. This calls for imaginative and inclusive innovation, which is why the Aviation Impact Accelerator brings together insight from industry, policy and civil society.”

̽��ֱ��AIA team also includes the Air Transportation Systems Lab at ̽��ֱ�� College London and the Melbourne Energy Institute at the ̽��ֱ�� of Melbourne. ̽��ֱ��AIA is in partnership with HRH ̽��ֱ��Prince of Wales’s Sustainable Markets Initiative, ̽��ֱ��World Economic Forum, Cambridge Zero, MathWorks and SATAVIA, and is supported by industry advisors Rolls-Royce, Boeing, BP, Heathrow and Siemens Energy.

“ ̽��ֱ��transition to a zero-carbon future requires a bold response to climate change,” said Dr Emily Shuckburgh, Director of Cambridge Zero. “ ̽��ֱ��Aviation Impact Accelerator is such a bold response, bringing together multidisciplinary expertise to inform decision making and enable meaningful change.”

̽��ֱ��simulator was conceived in early 2020 at a roundtable hosted by HRH ̽��ֱ��Prince of Wales and attended by senior industry leaders, government and academia.

“ ̽��ֱ��Aviation Impact Accelerator will play a vital role in highlighting the action required to achieve net zero aviation and support Heathrow to ensure 2019 is our year of ‘peak carbon’,” said John Holland-Kaye, CEO of Heathrow Airport. “ ̽��ֱ��first priority is accelerated use of sustainable aviation fuel. Government can act to unlock SAF through a mandate stimulating supply, plus incentives to drive demand. ̽��ֱ��prize is a new British growth industry and UK leadership in the race to net zero.”

̽��ֱ��official launch of the Aviation Impact Accelerator will take place at COP26 in November.

Adapted from a CISL news story.

̽��ֱ�� announces launch of Aviation Impact Accelerator (AIA) – a team of experts in aerospace, economics, policy, and climate science, who are building an interactive simulator to help achieve net zero flight.

Achieving an aviation sector with no climate impact is one of society’s biggest challenges: solving it will require a complex combination of technology, business, human behaviour and policy

Rob Miller

Photo by Pascal Meier on Unsplash

Plane landing in Zurich

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Beyond the pandemic: learn from the survival of the fittest firms

lw355 — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 12:24:40 +0000

Manufacturing firms have had a rocky few months, struggling with fractured supply chains, uncertain supply and demand, and shutdowns. Yet some have not only survived but thrived, re-organising and experimenting with their operations during the pandemic. This could be ‘Operational Darwinism’ in action says Jag Srai – and the results could help businesses prepare for future disruptions.

Young leaders from UK and Latin America tackle future at Shaping Horizons

plc32 — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 12:18:09 +0000

They will explore how emerging technologies like those underpinning genomics, artificial intelligence, clean energy, and smart cities can be used and regulated to create a more equitable and sustainable global community as well as how to encourage sustainable leadership across disciplines and move beyond traditional diplomacy to address global challenges like climate change and social inequalities.

Shaping Horizons 2019 is a Summit and Action Programme rooted in science, policy, and innovation and will strengthen ties and build relationships between young Future Leaders and Senior Leaders from the UK and Latin America. ̽��ֱ��delegates have been selected from across academia, industry, and government.

Professor David Cardwell, FREng, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Strategy and Planning at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, welcomed delegates at the start of the Summit on behalf of the ̽��ֱ��.

“On every front, the ̽��ֱ�� has been and continues to be engaged with Latin America, including the pleasure of hosting this fantastic summit, Shaping Horizons, where the mission is to empower and promote youth, create networks and to drive change,” Cardwell said.

̽��ֱ��week will culminate with the Future Leaders pitching for prize money to support their own innovative social impact projects they have developed through mentorship and learning during the Summit.

Winners will be supported in further developing and launching their projects through the Action Programme which will follow on from the Summit.

Nigel Baker, OBE MVO, Head of the Latin America Department at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office told delegates that all their ideas would help shape the future.

“Shaping Horizons is absolutely driven by the sense of entrepreneurship, innovation, and ideas of the young people involved. It is going to be fascinating to see the proposals that are coming out,” Baker said.

“There are 24 different teams and there are going to be some spectacular proposals and ideas. Some will win prizes, some will not, but I suspect that all of those ideas are going to be applicable in the future.”

Shaping Horizons is a non-profit initiative organised at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge with the support of the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, and the Cambridge Hub of Global Shapers Community, which is an initiative of the World Economic Forum.

Shaping Horizons was founded by Dr Matias Acosta, a UK-Canada Fellow at the Centre for Science and Policy, and Theo Lundberg, a NanoDTC PhD Student in the Department of Physics.

“Shaping Horizons was founded to promote sustainability using global, cross-disciplinary cooperation as our driving force,” Acosta said.

“We are a team of 40 undergraduates and academics from across more than 20 departments from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge bringing this initiative forward. Our goal is to build a shared and sustainable future between Latin America and the UK.

"We will be providing more than £30,000 in support for cooperative bilateral projects and also have designed a continuous mentorship programme to maximize the chance of success of each of the ideas.”

More than 100 future leaders from the UK and Latin America have gathered at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge to discuss the future of work and education in an increasingly global digital era at this year’s Shaping Horizons summit.

Shaping Horizons was founded to promote sustainability using global, cross-disciplinary cooperation as our driving force.

Shaping Horizons founder Dr Matias Acosta

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Cambridge hosts World Economic Forum meeting looking at role of nature in delivering development goals

cjb250 — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 04:15:43 +0000

During a panel discussion and round-table, business leaders, academics and conservation practitioners will share their insights on developing nature-based solutions that reverse the loss of biodiversity at scale.

Sir David has previously said that he does not recall hearing the word ‘conservation’ during his undergraduate days. But in the 70 years since, much has changed. We have increased our understanding of and appreciation for how the natural world underpins life on Earth, the fragility of our planet’s natural systems, and the need to protect these systems.

In this context, the private sector’s dependence on a healthy natural world is an area of particular focus and growing prominence. ̽��ֱ��World Economic Forum (WEF) included a number of environmental risks, including biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, in the top ten risks identified in the its Global Risks Report 2018.

Within Sir David’s adult life, the UN’s approach to the problems facing our planet has also undergone a significant change. ̽��ֱ��ongoing commitment to global well-being is now closely linked with the need for development to advance within planetary boundaries. In 2015 the UN adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, which strive to address the challenges we face using an integrated and holistic approach. Investing in nature has the potential to make a significant contribution to all 17 Goals, and the private sector is key to this investment.

̽��ֱ��panel discussion will be chaired by Professor Stephen Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, and a prominent thinker on human rights and environmental law.

“Restoring and sustaining the natural world is a powerful feat of creativity and imagination, and a powerful commitment to building a more abundant and equitable society,” says Professor Toope. “It is also a challenge we must meet, because without it there is no meaningful future for society as we know it.

“I strongly believe that organisations such as the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have a duty to engage with these challenges, no matter how great. Through collaborations across disciplines and between sectors, including NGOs and business, we can better understand and identify solutions and demonstrate the leadership necessary to address these major issues.”

̽��ֱ��panel will draw on expert insight from the Cambridge Conservation Initiative partners, including IUCN, UNEP-WCMC and Fauna & Flora International. ̽��ֱ��role of the private sector in delivering the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals will feature prominently, with a particular focus on nature’s contribution to sustainability, as well as to health, equality, justice and climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Business is already investing significantly in managing and conserving nature, but there are still considerable opportunities to do more. As panellist Corli Pretorius, Deputy Director of the UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre, explains: “Nature’s sustainability should be explicit in our procurement decisions and consumer choices. It should form an integral part of the decision-making of a financial system for sustainable development.”

André Hoffmann, panellist and Vice-Chairman of the Board of Roche Holding Ltd adds: “ ̽��ֱ��business community has the chance to take a leadership role in including the natural world in business thinking. For years the benefits delivered by nature have been undervalued by the private sector. We now require a wholesale shift to a new way of operating, towards innovative nature-based approaches that strive to improve the state of the natural world to ensure a sustainable future for society and our planet.”

This event recognises a pivotal moment in the fate of our natural world, both in terms of its parlous state and its increasing prominence in the limelight. Sir David Attenborough, who has witnessed both the birth of conservation, and an increasing focus on the environment across sectors, will conclude the panel discussion with his thoughts on nature’s role in the future of humanity.

A bold response to the world’s greatest challenge
̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is building on its existing research and launching an ambitious new environment and climate change initiative. Cambridge Zero is not just about developing greener technologies. It will harness the full power of the ̽��ֱ��’s research and policy expertise, developing solutions that work for our lives, our society and our biosphere.

Sir David Attenborough will join the Cambridge Conservation Initiative as it hosts an event at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos today exploring the role of nature in delivering the Sustainable Development Goals.

Restoring and sustaining the natural world is a powerful feat of creativity and imagination

Stephen Toope

Vincent van Zalinge

Kingfisher

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̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge at the World Economic Forum 2016

cjb250 — Fri, 15 Jan 2016 10:56:46 +0000

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� will host an IdeasLab looking at how breakthroughs in carbon reduction technologies will transform industries. IdeasLabs are quick-fire visual presentations followed by workgroup discussion, and have proved a successful format for engaging various communities in academic thinking.

Carbon Reduction Technologies: ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge IdeasLab

Wednesday 20 January 16:15 - 17:30

Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor, will introduce this event, which will look at how research by Cambridge academics has led to breakthroughs in carbon reduction technologies that will transform a range of industries. Ideas to be discussed include:

Decarbonizing industrial-scale processes using virtual avatars
Self-healing concrete for low-carbon infrastructure
Improving solar materials efficiency using quantum mechanics
Quantum materials for zero-loss transmission of electricity

̽��ֱ��event is supported Energy@Cambridge, a Strategic Research Initiative that brings together the activities of over 250 world-leading academics working in all aspects of energy-related research, covering energy supply, conversion and demand, across a wide range from departments.

̽��ֱ��speakers, all members of the Strategic Research Initiative, are:

Professor Abir Al-Tabbaa, Department of Engineering

Professor Al-Tabbaa is a Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Future Infrastructure and Built Environment. She leads international work on sustainable and innovative materials for construction and the environment. Her particular expertise relates to low-carbon and self-healing construction materials, ground improvement, soil mix technology and contaminated land remediation.

Professor Sir Richard Friend, Department of Physics

Professor Friend is the Director of the Maxwell Centre and the Winton Fund for the Physics of Sustainability. He is the lead academic on one of Energy@Cambridge’s Grand Challenges – Materials for Energy Efficient Information Communications Technology.

Professor Friend’s research encompasses the physics, materials science and engineering of semiconductor devices made with carbon-based semiconductors, particularly polymers. His research group was first to demonstrate using polymers efficient operation of field-effect transistors and light-emitting diodes. These advances revealed that the semiconductor properties of this broad class of materials are unexpectedly clean, so that semiconductor devices can both reveal their novel semiconductor physics, including their operation in efficient photovoltaic diodes, optically-pumped lasing, directly-printed polymer transistor circuits and light-emitting transistors.

Professor Markus Kraft, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology

Professor Kraft is the director of the Singapore-Cambridge CREATE Research Centre and a principal investigator of the Cambridge Centre for Carbon Reduction in Chemical Technology (C4T), one of the Grand Challenges. C4T is a world-leading partnership between Cambridge and Singapore, set up to tackle the environmentally relevant and complex problem of assessing and reducing the carbon footprint of the integrated petro-chemical plants and electrical network on Jurong Island in Singapore.

Professor Kraft has contributed to the detailed modelling of combustion synthesis of organic and inorganic nanoparticles. He has worked on fluidization, spray drying and granulation of fine powders. His interested include computational modelling and optimization targeted towards developing carbon abatement and emissions reduction technologies.

Dr Suchitra Sebastian, Department of Physics

Dr Sebastian creates and studies interesting quantum materials - often under extreme conditions such as very high magnetic and electric fields, enormous pressures, and very low temperatures - with a view to discovering unusual phases of matter. Among these are the family of superconductors - which have the exciting property of transporting electricity with no energy loss - and hence hold great promise for energy saving applications. One of her research programmes is to create a new generation of superconductors that operate at accessible temperatures, thus providing energy transmission and storage solutions of the future.

Will Science Save Us?

Friday 22 January

̽��ֱ��Vice Chancellor and Dr Suchitra Sebastian will take part in a lunchtime discussion entitled Will Science Save Us?, which will look at how we accelerate scientific breakthroughs that address society's greatest challenges.

* * *

̽��ֱ��World Economic Forum is an independent international organisation engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas; this year’s theme is ̽��ֱ��Reshaping of the World: Consequences for Society, Politics and Business.

For further information or to contact any of the speakers, please contact the team at Energy@Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��Vice Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is to lead a delegation of academics to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, in January 2016, to explore issues including carbon reduction technologies and how science and engineering can best address society's greatest challenges.

̽��ֱ��BlogSpot

Coal Fired Power Station (cropped)

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Cambridge in Davos

jfp40 — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 16:09:10 +0000

Professor Lord Martin Rees (Institute of Astronomy), Professor Julian Dowdeswell (Scott Polar Research Institute) and Professor Jon Hutton (UNEP-WCMC and Hughes Hall) will deliver an IdeasLab presentation at the World Economic Forum in Davos on 24 January. Together, they will explore the technological and policy innovations that will help us adapt to a climate-changed world.

IdeasLabs are quick-fire visual presentations followed by workgroup discussion, and have proved a successful format for engaging various communities in academic thinking.

As a collaborator in research at Imperial College London, Professor Barbara Sahakian of the Cambridge Department of Psychiatry will also give a presentation, on cognitive stimulation and the ethical implications of drugs to enhance brain function.

̽��ֱ��Forum will provide an opportunity for the Cambridge researchers to engage with decision-makers in business, NGOs and in public policy, and to highlight new ideas from Cambridge in responding to global challenges. Apart from the Annual Meeting, several Cambridge academics contribute to the World Economic Forum year-round, as members of Global Agenda Councils.

̽��ֱ��Vice-Chancellor said “Cambridge academics are working in partnership with many organisations to help global society address some of the thorniest questions. I look forward to a productive engagement with Annual Meeting participants from every sector.”

/research

A delegation of Cambridge academics, led by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, is attending the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, this week.

Cambridge academics are working in partnership with many organisations to help global society address some of the thorniest questions.

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz

World Economic Forum

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