91AV

Steven Agnew is Head of the Northern Ireland Renewables Industry Group (NIRIG), which is the representative body for the renewable electricity sector.  He served for eight years as an MLA during which time he chaired the All Party Group on Renewables and sat on the Enterprise, Trade and Investment Committee.

Talk title
RE-energising NI

John Barry is Professor of Green Political Economy and Co-Director of the Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action at Queens University Belfast.  His areas of research include post-growth and heterodox political economy; the politics, policy and political economy of climate breakdown and low carbon energy transitions. His latest book is The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability: Human Flourishing in a Climate-Changed, Carbon-Constrained World (2012, Oxford University Press).  He is co-chair of the Belfast Climate Commission and was a Green Party councillor from 2011-2018. 

Presentation -  This is what a real emergency looks like: what the response to Coronavirus can teach us about how we can and need to respond to the planetary emergency

Rachel Cassidy is a catchment scientist with the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) in Belfast. Her research focusses on understanding and mitigating the impacts of agricultural contaminants on water quality in surface and groundwater systems through a combination of high resolution monitoring and modelling approaches.
Her background is in environmental and earth sciences with a PhD in Geophysics from Ulster University. She has worked on environmental monitoring programmes in soil, surface and groundwater across the island of Ireland and in East Africa.
Current research, funded by DAERA, the EU INTERREG VA and H2020 programmes, is examining the drivers of nutrient, sediment and pesticide loss from farm land in catchments across Northern Ireland and examining the possibilities for mitigating these losses through a better integration of landscape, soil and climate factors towards targeted farm and catchment specific measures.
 
Talk Title
Soil and landscape controls on nutrient loss from farmland to waterbodies.

Dr Marie Cowan MRIA MIoD PGeo is Director of the Geological Survey of Northern Ireland (GSNI), an office of the Department for the Economy staffed by scientists from the British Geological Survey.  
 
Marie is an elected Member of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and works on its Geosciences and Geographical Sciences Committee, North-South Standing Committee and Higher Education Futures Group. 
 
Marie is a member of the Institute of Directors (IoD) and holds an IoD diploma in Company Direction. 
 
Marie is a Professional Geologist with the Institute of Geologists of Ireland and board member for the Irish Centre for Research in Applied Geosciences at University College Dublin. 
 
Marie is a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly All-Party Group for Science and Technology and the NI Learned Societies and Professional Bodies Forum. 
 
Marie holds a 1st Class Hons. B.Sc. Geology and Ph.D. in Geology from the Queen’s University of Belfast. 

Jennifer (Jenny) McElwain is a Professor of Botany at Trinity College Dublin's School of Natural Sciences, Head of Botany within the School and Director of Trinity College Botanic Garden. Professor McElwain ‘s research and teaching focus on the evolution of atmospheric composition and climate change over deep geological time and the interactions between plants, atmosphere and climate. Her research addresses fundamental questions in plant sciences such as how future climate change will impact the survival of plant species, their functioning and distribution. She is a passionate advocate for the discipline of botany and the importance of plants in our daily lives. Her research programme has been successfully funded through both national and international grants and awards including Science Foundation Ireland, Irish Research Council, European Research Council, US National Science Foundation, National Geographic and Marie Sklodowska Curie. She is an elected Member of the Royal Irish Academy, has published widely in international scientific journals and is the author of a highly regarded undergraduate text book and two popular science books, ‘14 Expeditions’ and ‘Tropical Arctic. Lost Plants, Future Climates, and the Discovery of Ancient Greenland’ to be published by Chicago University Press in 2021.  She is currently Chair of the Royal Irish Academy Committee on Climate Change and Environmental Science. Before joining TCD in 2017, she was an Associate Professor/Professor at University College Dublin for 11 years, a curator of fossil plants at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago (2000-2006) and post-doctoral researcher at the University of Sheffield, UK (2003-2006). She graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a BA Botany in 1993 and from Royal Holloway University of London with a PhD in 1997.

Talk title
Tracking 400 million years of climate change with fossils. What's in store for our future?

Helen has spent her career working with the 91AV and has led many of its strategic functions including Education and Professional Practice, Science and Communities, Membership and RSC China. She is currently Chair of the Science Council, a UK charity for the advancement of the Science profession, and chair of the Technicians’ Commitment Steering Board. A champion for inclusion and diversity, Helen is a Chartered Chemist and a Chartered Scientist.