Taking place Oct. 13 to 17, Penn’s sixth Climate Week includes dozens of in-person and virtual events that cross disciplines, from energy policy and history to engineering and medicine.
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Events include the Penn Climate Insights Ribbon Cutting, a Green Fund Pitch Competition, Beyond the Bin: Demystifying the Journey of Waste at Penn, Climate Action to Support Bees, and the annual BioBlitz at Kaskey Pond (pictured).
(Image: Tommy Leonardi)
Key Takeaways
From hands-on activities and competitions to panel discussions and lectures, Climate Week presents a variety of in-person and virtual events.
The schedule includes events across disciplines, such as energy policy, history, design, engineering, and medicine.
Programming includes launch events for new initiatives.
Climate Week at Penn returns for the sixth year Oct. 13 to 17, with dozens of free in-person and virtual discussions and activities across disciplines. The theme this year is “Hot Spots.”
“We thought that spoke to not just the literal heat of climate change, but also the fact that climate itself can be a hot spot—a hub of interest, activity, and sometimes controversy,” says Environmental Innovations Initiative (EII) director Katie Unger Baillie. They wanted to create a theme inviting people to “come to Climate Week at Penn with their own ideas and programming to share with the campus community.”
“My hope is that people show up to an event that may not be aligned with their area of academic study or research and learn about a different aspect of climate change,” Baillie says. Some events have already reached capacity—such as the conversation with Bill Nye the Science Guy—but other events remain open.
Previous Climate Week events included lectures on climate energy solutions, hands-on information tables on Pennsylvania bat populations, and the annual BioBlitz at Penn’s BioPond.
(Images: (top) Dwane Holloman; (bottom row) Heidi Wunder, Tommy Leonardi)
Penn Climate Insights Ribbon Cutting—Celebrate the launch of Penn Vet’s new digital platform for accessing and sharing trusted climate-related knowledge and research. Anyone with a PennKey can access the short articles, recorded lectures, and slides, and experts can offer submissions. (Monday, 5:00 to 6:30 p.m., Climate Week Tent)
Beyond the Bin: Demystifying the Journey of Waste at Penn—The student group WasteWise at Penn will host experts from Penn and Waste Management to share how a materials recovery facility operates and what happens to different kinds of waste. (Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 12 p.m., 3101 Walnut St. – FRES Conference Room #01, and online)
Bee the Change: Climate Action to Support Bees—Help build bee hotels to support native solitary bee populations and learn from Penn Vet researchers about how climate change is impacting bees and how to protect them. (Thursday, 5 to 7 p.m., Climate Week Tent)
Rashi Sabherwal, a doctoral student in political science, explores how women engage politically in society in informal roles through her research in India.
Applying design to agriculture for a new approach to agroforestry
Penn researchers are leading a multidisciplinary land-use project that blends trees, livestock, and streamside buffers to turn New Bolton Center into a living lab for stewardship agriculture.
Helping robots work together to explore the Moon and Mars
Penn Engineers, NASA, and five other universities tested robotic systems designed to help unmanned explorers cooperate in the dunes of White Sands, New Mexico, paving the way for Moon and Mars exploration.
