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Fall 2006

Sponsored by:


Forest Products Management Development Institute (FPMDI)

Ecosystem Science and Sustainability Initiative

Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering (BBE)

CSOM' Strategic Management Research Center

 

Dear fellow colleagues, students and friends:

You are invited to the first industrial ecology seminar series organized at the U. Join us and share your views and interests with us. Industrial ecology is an inter-disciplinary field aiming at closing material cycles within the industrial system by developing symbiotic functions between industries. In industrial ecology, an industrial system is viewed as a complex organism that processes energy and materials under its own metabolic structure. As an evolving field, industrial ecology embraces various efforts at different scales including: understanding the structure of material stocks and flows over the anthroposphere and the ecosphere; applying key ecological principles for industrial systems design and management; developing eco-industrial parks and by-product exchange networks; understanding the interactions between product systems and the environment.


Under different names and contexts, we could find numerous outstanding research and education activities in our University that address key ideas and concepts of industrial ecology. We wish that the seminar series serves as a platform for our faculty, students and partners who share common research interests in this area.


This fall, we have invited three renowned scholars as the main speakers. We will have fair amount of time for open discussion for each seminar as well. Seminars are free; however preregistration is required (see below).

Best regards,

Sangwon Suh and Timothy M. Smith
Seminar Series Co-organizers


 

Nature, Technology and the Human in the Anthropocene

Professor Braden Allenby

10/27 (Fri) 3:00 – 4:30 PM Location: The Arthur Upson Room (102)-Walter Library

Dr. Allenby presentation in power point

 

A principal result of the Industrial Revolution and associated changes in human demographic, cultural, economic, and technology systems is the evolution of an Earth in which the dynamics of major natural systems are increasingly affected by human activity.  As the journal Nature said in 2003, “Welcome to the Anthropocene.”  The increasing importance of the emergent behaviors of the complex integrated human/natural/built systems that characterize such an era creates a need to extend industrial ecology to the planetary scale.  This capability, which is known as earth systems engineering and management, is in its infancy, but is necessary if we are respond rationally, responsibly, and ethically to the challenges of the Anthropocene.

 

Dr. Braden Allenby
Lincoln Professor of Engineering and Ethics; Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Professor of Law.

Professor Allenby is the current president of International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE) and the current chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Committee on Science. From 1997 to 2004, Prof. Allenby served as a Vice-President of AT&T. He is the author of several books around industrial ecology including the standard text, Industrial Ecology with Thomas E. Graedel.

This is a free seminar; however space is limited. Please register here

 

 

Global Transition Dynamics: Complex Technological-Societal Interactive Networks/Systems

Professor Massoud Amin

12/01 (Fri) 12:30 – 2:00 PM (With Luncheon)

Location: The Arthur Upson Room (102)-Walter Library

Dr. Amin presentation (pdf)

The time is ripe for an integrated planning approach to guide national and global technological development. History suggests that developments in fundamental technology are the principal force affecting most social trends, in recent centuries driving the major shifts to new life-styles and economic patterns. For example, new energy sources create new sources of political and personal power. Faster transportation and communications hasten social commerce as well as economic commerce. Improved public health leads to new ways of living that reflect longer, healthier lives—or ways that exploit the new ability of medicine to mitigate unhealthy choices.

Looking at the changes over the past century alone, the history of technology reveals its seminal influence on fundamental social changes worldwide. An empirical observation is that science and technology are man-made resources that grow faster than the adaptation of social structures to the new conditions. That is, technologies lead and social change follows.

To begin addressing these challenges at the interface of science and engineering coupled with industrial ecology, business and policy, we present our on-going work on a holistic approach to analysis of the national and global development that builds on advances in the mathematics of complexity, methods of probabilistic risk assessment, and techniques for fast simulation and modeling. Integrated into a composite analysis technique, these advances raise an unprecedented possibility for projecting the future implications—social, economic, environmental, human health, political, and technical—of major societal development activities and technology programs for nations individually and the world as a whole.

Taken together, they promise both a real-time outlook and a future perspective on the spectrum of outcomes that might result from alternative national decision pathways. Building upon such projection capability could reveal the development options, results, and implications for any strategy for a specific type of nation, whether primitive, underdeveloped, developing, or industrial. Forcing functions, critical junctures, and pinch points could be identified so that scarce development resources can be allocated to maximize benefit and minimize unintended consequences.

 

Dr. Massoud Amin
Honeywell/H. W. Sweatt Chair in Technological Leadership; Director, Center for the Development of Technological Leadership (CDTL);     Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Minnesota.

Dr. Amin is a member of several boards including the Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment (BICE) at the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the Board on Mathematical Science and Applications at the National Academy of Sciences. He is the author or co-author of more than 125 research papers and the editor of seven collections of manuscripts, and he serves on the editorial boards of five journals.

 

This is a free seminar; however space is limited. Please register here

 

 

Cooperation between Corporations and Environmental Groups:
A transaction Cost perspective

Professor Andrew King

12/08 (Fri) 11:30 am– 1pm. Location: Carlson School of Management Room 2-213

 

Theory suggests that when transaction costs are low, corporations and stakeholders can minimize social costs by transacting to their mutual advantage, but when transaction costs are high, reducing social costs requires the intervention of a centralized institution.  Surprisingly little work has considered what happens in between – when transaction costs exist but recourse to hierarchical institution is barred.  This paper uses transaction cost analysis to hypothesize how collaboration between corporations and environmental stakeholder groups will be structured. Click here to download this paper

 

Dr. Andrew King

Andrew A. King is an Associate Professor of Strategy at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. 

Prior to joining Tuck, he was a faculty member at the Stern School of Business at NYU.  He has held visiting positions at both the University of Michigan and MIT. He has authored numerous publications on technology strategy, environmental management, and industry self-regulation.  Dr. King holds a Ph.D. in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an M.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley; and a B.A. in mechanical engineering from Brown University.

This is a free seminar; however space is limited. Please register here