Bella Gaia performance and panel discussion to mark IGBP's closure

The performance will be immediately followed by a discussion panel featuring some of the world’s leading Earth-system scientists, moderated by the award-winning BBC writer and broadcaster Gaia Vince. Panellists will discuss the future of our planet in the Anthropocene and the future of research for global sustainability, in particular the new ten-year international programme Future Earth.

For more information about the Bella Gaia performance and to get tickets for it click here.

If you enter the code AGU when ordering, you can recieve a 20% discount.

Gaia Vince, who will moderate this panel, is an award-winning writer and broadcaster specializing in science and the environment. She has been the front editor of the journal Nature Climate Change, the news editor of Nature and online editor of New Scientist. Her work has appeared in newspapers and magazines in the UK, US and Australia, including The Guardian, Science, Scientific American and Australian Geographic. She has a column, Smart Planet, on BBC Online and devises and presents science programs for BBC radio. Her first book, Adventures In The Anthropocene: A journey to the heart of the planet we made won the Royal Society Winton prize for science books 2015. She blogs at WanderingGaia.com, tweets at @WanderingGaia, & lives in London.

Kenji Williams is an immersive multi-media director and producer for various platforms from live theater to fulldome planetarium films. He is the founder, director, composer and violinist for Bella Gaia. Williams explores the nexus of art and science through collaborations as diverse as astronaut Koichi Wakata orbiting live aboard the International Space Station, consciousness researcher Deepak Chopra, and top world music musicians. Combining unique skills in film and music, Williams has earned international awards from the Canadian Society of Cinematographers to Sundance Film Festival, Best Soundtrack Composition at the Macau International Fulldome Film Festival, & media exposure from the BBC, NPR, PBS, ABC, and FOX. BELLA GAIA, involves collaborating with institutions such as NASA, The Smithsonian, and Denver Museum of Nature & Science, and has raised over half a million dollars in funding from NASA and other foundations. Kenji is recognized globally for pushing the boundaries of immersive experiences and pioneering the convergence of art & science. www.bellagaia.com

AGU President Dr. Margaret Leinen is the Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Vice Chancellor for Marine Science of University of California at San Diego. The 111-year-old Scripps Institution is one of the largest oceanographic research institutes. Dr. Leinen is an ocean biogeochemist and paleoceanographer whose research includes study of ocean carbon cycling and the role of the oceans in climate.  She is also the President of the American Geophysical Union, the largest geoscience society in the world, and has also served as the President of The Oceanography Society and Chair of the AAAS Section on Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Science. She served as Assistant Director for Geosciences, U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) from 2000-2007. She has been the Vice Chair of the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme, Chair of the US Global Change Research Program and Vice Chair of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.

Prof. James P M Syvitski is Chair of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), Executive Director of the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System (CSDMS), and a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He received his Ph.D. in oceanography and geological sciences in 1978 at the University of British Columbia. Today he works at the forefront of computational geosciences as relevant to sediment transport, land-ocean interactions and Earth-surface dynamics, and has won numerous awards for his efforts. James has over 500 publications, including authorship or co-authorship of 65 peer-reviewed books, and has served in various editorial positions for many international journals. He is actively engaged with various Anthropocene working groups, one of which is tasked with determining whether the Anthropocene – the age of humans – warrants formal recognition as a geological epoch.

Josh Tewksbury is an ecologist, conservation biologist, and planetary health scientist with experience both in academia and in civil society. Before joining Future Earth as the Director of the Colorado Global Hub, Josh was the Maggie and Doug Walker Endowed Professor of Natural History at the Univ. of Washington, with appointments both in the Biology dept. and the College of the Environment, where his work focused on major global change issues, including the impacts of climate change on biodiversity, the potential of landscape connectivity to mitigate the impacts of climate change, and the impacts of species loss on ecosystem function.  In addition to his decade + of academic work, which has been published in top journals, Josh also served as the founding director of the Luc Hoffmann Inst., a global research center based in Switzerland focused on the co-creation of multi-disciplinary research. As director, Josh launched over a dozen research projects, including work on the Food-Energy-Water nexus in South-East Asia, Development corridors in East Africa, global mapping of threats to biodiversity, and the development of regionally-appropriate low-carbon sustainability targets for urban areas.