Course Overview & Details
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Presenter: Berkeley and MIT grad with dual backgrounds 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 groups.
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Host Context: Stanford graduate-level lecture for a climate action, clean tech entrepreneurship, and earth systems curriculum (the same series featuring prior speakers like Brent Constantz and Terry Root).
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Session Format: 75-minute presentation + live audience Q&A, with hands-on lab/field test examples and unfiltered insights into building a grassroots climate project.
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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, and while emissions mitigation (renewables, efficiency, carbon sequestration) is the only permanent long-term solution, it is moving too slowly to avoid catastrophic tipping points. We have a responsibility to research localized, low-risk, reversible climate intervention strategies now – not to replace mitigation, but to buy critical time for it to work. The presenter’s Ice 911 project, which restores the Arctic’s reflective sea ice, is one such responsible, science-backed backup plan.
