- About the Lecture
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About the Lecture
As Susan Hockfield recounts, MIT presentations on disruptive energy research at the most recent World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland, provided the single glimmer of optimism for a Time Magazine correspondent. Paraphrasing him, she says, “What MIT is good for: a dose of reality-based hope that we can address in a real way the most serious of the world’s great challenges.”
MIT has committed body and soul to helping solve the problem of sustainable energy. Hockfield describes an “overwhelming call” from staff, students and alumni to pursue this issue in the coming decades. Reaching across all schools, demanding new forms of collaboration and interdisciplinary effort, MIT has launched an Energy Initiative to address three main themes: new technology for a cleaner future; improving today’s energy systems for changes in the near term; and addressing challenges posed by emerging economies.
Hockfield says researchers seek no silver bullet but that MIT is committed to a “portfolio of solutions.” She sees this vast academic enterprise providing the “same kind of catalytic inspirational effect that the Apollo program had on my generation” and triggering a cycle of innovation that will help strengthen the nation’s economy.
Nazli Choucri situates the current energy crisis in global reality. She describes how the legacies of the 20th century frame expectations and politics in the 21st century around energy supply, demand and distribution.
A rising world population (in general) and mass migration create pressure, as does a rapidly rising quality of life in developing nations. World trade has led to a “shifting structure of economies and societies,” including the somewhat hopeful evolution of economies involving knowledge creation and internet based interactions.
Choucri sees as well the emergence of a “dark side” in the 20th century: unstable or hostile nations controlling energy resources; more countries in conflict or under threat due to climate issues, as dependence on fossil fuels expands; and environmental dangers (such as big storms) multiplying. Also, new players sit at the table -- more multinational corporations, more sovereign states, NGOs -- with unpredictable or competing agendas.
Choucri believes we also gained some useful advantages during the last century, including a better understanding of the connections among energy, environment and the economy. But the world has yet to figure out a new politics for managing these issues. She says that global volatility means greater difficulty achieving “a politics of consensus” around global energy strategies, and we “now must push the envelope on collaboration,” finding “new strategies for negotiation,” assuming we can first find a national consensus.Related Videos
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- About the Speakers
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About the Speakers
Dr. Susan Hockfield
MIT President
Professor of NeuroscienceSusan Hockfield has served as the sixteenth president of MIT since December 2004. A strong advocate of the vital role that science, technology, and the research university play in the world, she believes that MIT can best advance its historic mission of teaching, research, and service by providing robust and sustained support for the ideas and energies of its faculty and students.
A noted neuroscientist whose research has focused on the development of the brain, Dr. Hockfield is the first life scientist to lead MIT and holds a faculty appointment as professor of neuroscience in the Institute's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
Under her leadership, MIT has launched a major Institute-wide initiative in energy research and education and continues to expand its activities at the intersection of the life sciences and engineering, with a particular focus on cancer research. The Institute has also embarked on a sustained effort to strengthen support for student life and learning, including undergraduate curriculum renewal, and is undertaking major campus construction and renovation projects with a combined value of approximately three-quarters of a billion dollars.
Before assuming the presidency of MIT, Dr. Hockfield was the William Edward Gilbert Professor of Neurobiology and provost at Yale University. She joined the Yale faculty in 1985 and was named full professor in 1994. While at Yale, she played a central role in the university's leadership, first as dean of its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1998-2002), with oversight of more than 70 graduate programs, and then as provost, the university's chief academic and administrative officer.
Dr. Hockfield earned her B.A. in biology from the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. from the Georgetown University School of Medicine, while carrying out her dissertation research in neuroscience at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at San Francisco in 1979-80, and then joined the scientific staff at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York in 1980. She served as director of the Laboratory's Summer Neurobiology Program from 1985 to 1997, concurrent with her teaching post at Yale, and more recently as a trustee of the laboratory. Her memberships in professional societies include the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Neuroscience.Nazli Choucri
Professor of Political Science Associate Director, Technology and Development Program
Nazli Choucri works in international relations and international political economy with a special focus on conflict, connectivity, and the global environment. As Director of the Global System for Sustainable Development (GSSD), she manages a distributed multilingual e-knowledge networking system designed to facilitate the provision and uses of knowledge in transitions to sustainability. She continues her research on interconnections among population, politics, and environment extending work reported in three of her earlier books" Population Dynamics in International Violence; International Energy Interdependence; and International Energy Futures, and her edited volume, Multidisciplinary Perspectives of Population and Conflict. She is co-author of Nations in Conflict, and the companion book on The Challenge of Japan Before World War II and After.
Choucri also serves as director of the Middle East Program at MIT. She is the founding editor of the MIT Press Series on Global Environmental Accord has just completed service as General Editor of the International Political Science Review. Choucri established the MIT Press Series on Global Environmental Accords: Strategies for Sustainability.
Choucri has served as advisor to numerous international organizations --including the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Environment Program, and the United Nations Fund for Population, among others -- as well as to a large number of national agencies. - About the Host
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About the Host
Alumni Association
Video Player
Energy in a Global Context
- Dr. Susan Hockfield
Nazli Choucri - June 9, 2007
- Running Time: 1:30:56
