Course Overview & Details
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Presenter: Berkeley and MIT graduate with dual expertise in chemical engineering and EECS (MEMS specialization); former R&D lead at Chevron Research, HP Labs, and Agilent Labs; 12+ years in engineering entrepreneurship and consulting; founder of the environmental non-profit Ice 911 Research; and Stanford lecturer affiliated with the EECS department’s MEMS/NEMS research group.
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Host Context: Stanford graduate-level lecture for a climate action, clean tech entrepreneurship, and earth systems curriculum (the same ongoing series featuring prior speakers John Kumi, Terry Root, and Brent Constantz).
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Session Format: 50-minute presentation + live audience Q&A, with hands-on demos of ice-altering materials and real-time Arctic ice loss satellite footage.
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Core Audience: Civil/environmental engineering students, earth science researchers, climate policy students, and aspiring clean tech entrepreneurs.
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Central Thesis: We are already outpacing the IPCC’s worst-case climate warming projections. While emissions mitigation (renewables, efficiency, carbon sequestration) is the only permanent, long-term solution to the crisis, it is moving too slowly to avoid catastrophic planetary tipping points. We have a moral responsibility to research low-risk, reversible, localized climate intervention strategies now – not to replace mitigation, but to buy critical time for it to work, while centering a strict "do no harm" principle for ecosystems and frontline communities.
