Speaker: Max Eriksson, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Abstract: In 1966, at a time where Sweden had at most a handful of wolves, the grey wolf was listed as a protected species. Since then, the Swedish wolf population has increased in size and in 2018, there were approximately 309 individuals in Sweden. In tandem with the growing wolf population, the Swedish public has also grown increasingly polarized with respect to the wolf issue, and social conflicts over wolf policy have become among the most pervasive environmental conflicts in Sweden. I present an overview of the Swedish wolf conflict using survey data collected in Sweden during the period 2004 – 2014. First I establish a growing attitude divide between urban and rural members of the Swedish public and then go on to explain this development in terms of direct experiences with wolves and a general dissatisfaction with the political system (or political alienation).

Get a team of friends together and come flex your environmental knowledge with the Green Observer!

Teams must contain 3 to 6 members!

$20 per team if you pre-register online
$25 per team if you register at the door

Please have ONE person from your team fill out this form if you would like to pre-register:
(https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdRnOZeompCB6jPdVbt2qDGagay8AeUvN7piCANbUU3tw010A/viewform)

Prizes for the top 3 teams! Get psyched.

Come and learn about using worms for indoor compost (vermiculture) with Pastor Amy Thoren at St Andrew’s Lutheran Campus Center. Bring a lunch (and veggie peels) or grab some Pad Thai after next door at the UYMCA. Additional topics as time allows: native urban plantings and cold seed germinating.

Bus and bike friendly with street metered parking.

Background:
Worms convert food scraps and other natural material into the most nutrient-rich compost on earth. You might be surprised how easy it is to set up your own system for your home or business. There’s no smell and little work. Come learn about our invertebrate (worm) friends in our church, and find out how they can transform your kitchen scraps into gorgeous compost (the pic on the event page is from our own bin of worms here at church).

Pastor Amy Thoren, who has been composting with worms in her home kitchen for over 20 years, will lead the workshop.

Abstract: The production of integrated electronic circuits provides examples of the most advanced fabrication and assembly approaches that are generally characterized by large-scale integration of high-performance compact semiconductor elements that rely on rigid and essentially planar form factors. New methods of fabricating micro-scale semiconductor devices provide a set of enabling means to lift these constraints by engendering approaches to device configurations that would be impossible to realize with bulk, wafer-scale materials while retaining capacities for high (or altogether new forms of) electronic and/or optoelectronic performance.  An exemplary case of interest in our work includes large-area integrated electro-optical systems for photovoltaic energy conversion that can provide a potentially transformational approach to supplant current technologies with high performance, low cost alternatives.  In this talk I will highlight progress made in the collaborative research efforts that illustrate important opportunities for exploiting advances in optical and electronic materials in synergy with physical means of patterning, fabrication, and assembly to advance capabilities for photovoltaic energy conversion and highlight emerging applications for new materials and unconventional device form factors in high efficiency energy conversion technologies.  Of particular interest are the materials, and new understandings of science, that will allow an efficient utilization of the full solar resource.

Biography: Ralph G. Nuzzo, (co)author of more than 340 peer-reviewed papers and 40 awarded U.S. Letters of Patent, is the G. L. Clark Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a faculty he joined in 1991 and where he also holds an appointment as a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.  In 2014 he was appointed as an affiliated member of the Chemistry Faculty at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm Sweden.  He also is a Faculty Associate in Applied Physics and Materials Science at The California Institute of Technology, where he serves as the Director of the Department of Energy Light-Materials Interactions in Energy Conversion Energy Frontier Research Center.  Professor Nuzzo received an AB degree with High Honors and Highest Distinction in Chemistry from Rutgers College in 1976 and earned a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980. He accepted the position of Member of Technical Staff in Materials Research at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ in 1980, where he was named a Distinguished Member of the Staff in Research in 1987.  He joined the Illinois faculty in 1991. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Vacuum Society, and the Royal Society of Chemistry (which he further serves as a Collections Editor for Nanomaterials Chemistry).  His awards include the Forschungspreis of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, co-recipient of the George E. Smith Award of the IEEE, co-recipient of the Wall Street Journal Innovators Award for Semiconductors, and the Adamson Award of the American Chemical Society. Professor Nuzzo served for 20 years as the Senior Editor of the ACS journal Langmuir.

Today, the state of Illinois is a crucible for issues affecting the nation, from opioid abuse and neighborhood resilience to urban segregation and the rise of e-commerce landscapes. The Resilient Urban Futures symposium examines these issues in detail, bringing together scholars, designers, and experts from diverse fields to analyze present-day conditions and recommend how future urbanisms can emerge and thrive in our communities. Highlights of the symposium include keynote speeches by journalist Ben Austen and urban policy and health scholar Dr. Mindy Fullilove. Four panels led by faculty in the College of Fine and Applied Arts will address themes related to urban policy, landscape, health, housing, research, and design, reframing urbanism in 21st-century Illinois and offering new possibilities for collaborative, interdisciplinary engagement.