Dr Mar Fernandez
Brad Ack
Dr Harry Atwater
Jordan Breigner
Dr Chris Jones
Dr David Keller
pro Sir David King
Dr Vassilis Kitidis
Dr Leo Mercer
Dr Christopher Pearce
Professor Ralph Rayner
Dr Brian von Hertzen
Brad Ack has 35 years of experience working at the intersection of science, policy and environmental innovation, focused on the preservation of nature and a living world. During his career he has designed and implemented innovative conservation and sustainability initiatives spanning tropical forests and high deserts to estuaries and the global ocean. Brad has worked for both government and NGOs at senior levels.
Brad serves as Chief Executive Officer for Ocean Visions, an NGO at the center of a collaborative network of research institutions and innovators, investors, and practitioners of ocean regeneration. Ocean Visions is advancing a new agenda for the ocean, focused on directly addressing the greatest cause of harm – greenhouse gas pollution that is driving existential threats to the ocean. Ocean Visions works across sectors and disciplines to unlock new intellectual and financial resources to source, develop and scale cutting-edge innovation to regenerate critical components of the ocean-climate system.
Previously Brad served as SVP Oceans at WWF-US; Executive Director of the Puget Sound Recovery Program for the State of Washington; and Regional Director-Americas for the Marine Stewardship Council. He earlier led conservation programs at Grand Canyon Trust and started his career working on community-based conservation in Latin America. Brad received his Master’s degree from Georgetown University and Bachelor’s degree at Macalester College.
Closing Keynote Wednesday @ 5:00 PM
Jordan leads Commercial Operations at Running Tide, overseeing the teams responsible for regulatory affairs and policy, business development and enterprise growth, new markets and international expansion, partnerships, product, communications and marketing, and the organization’s coastal restoration work. In this role, he collaborates closely with Running Tide’s teams of scientists, researchers, engineers, and marine operators.
Prior to joining Running Tide, Jordan held roles in strategic communications and media firms, founded a startup accelerator focused on early-stage tech companies, and served in the Obama White House and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He joined Running Tide. He joined Running Tide because he was convinced that there exists no path to solving planetary problems without partnering with the natural systems of the ocean.
Connecting Capital to nature Wednesday @ 12:10 PM
Dr. Chris Jones has nearly 30 years’ experience of climate research at the Met Office Hadley Centre where he is a Research Fellow and formerly head of the “Earth System and Mitigation Science” team.
The Met Office Hadley Centre is the UK’s National Climate research Centre and provides world-leading scientific advice to UK government in support of its climate policies.
Chris’s personal research is in numerical modelling of the climate system and its interaction with natural ecosystems. Understanding how the world’s natural carbon sinks will respond to climate change is essential in order to quantify the remaining carbon budgets to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.
He has been a regular author for the IPCC since 2007 including the carbon cycle and projections chapters and the 2023 Synthesis Report (https://www.ipcc.ch/ar6-syr/).
An IPCC Perspective on The Role of Carbon Removal and sequestration in Achieving Net Zero and Beyond Wednesday @ 10:10 AM
David is a senior scientist in the Marine Biogeochemical Modelling Department at the
GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany. His research expertise and
interests include the assessment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approaches for climate change
mitigation, understanding feedbacks between biogeochemical cycles and the climate, and
investigating interactions between marine ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles. David uses
Earth system models to conduct much of his work and enjoys collaborating with scientists from a
wide range of other disciplines when working on complex research topics. David currently leads
the EU Horizon 2020 project OceanNETs, which investigates ocean-based CDR approaches, coleads
the Carbon Dioxide Removal Model Intercomparison Project (CDRMIP), and is a PI in 5
other projects on CDR. He was also a contributing author to the recent IPCC AR6 Working
Group I and Working III reports on the topic of CDR.
Ocean-based Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) Options for Climate Change Mitigation Wednesday @ 10:30 AM
Dr Vassilis Kitidis is an internationally acknowledged expert in field- and experimental-studies of carbon, non-CO2 greenhouse gases and nutrient cycling in a changing ocean.
A Senior Scientist with Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML, www.pml.ac.uk), Vassilis' work includes pioneering studies into the impact of ocean acidification on nutrient cycling.
He has led efforts to quantify ocean CO2 uptake and acidification at the basin-scale and is a regular contributor to the global carbon budget.
Vassilis' involvement with carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) stems from collaborations with industry and academia, providing evidence for both nature-based and engineering solutions.
He currently has a leading role in five CDR projects spanning wetland restoration to ocean alkalinity enhancement involving national and international collaborators.
Evaluating impacts Wednesday @ 3:20 PM
Chris’ research focusses on understanding the processes that cause, and can help mitigate, global climate change. He achieves this through the application of geochemical techniques to investigate interactions between Earth system processes, their role in regulating biogeochemical cycles, and how they are affected by environmental perturbations in modern and ancient settings. Much of his current research centres around applying that knowledge to assess potential approaches for combatting future climate change via carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and carbon capture and storage (CCS) techniques.
Chris is the scientific and technical lead of the Horizon Europe funded ‘Strategies for the evaluation and assessment of ocean-based carbon dioxide removal’ (SEAO2-CDR) project that aims to deliver the insights, tools and guidelines required for the safe and effective implementation of appropriate ocean-based CDR approaches. He is also a partner in the ‘Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation’ (LC3M) and UKRI/BBSRC funded ‘Enhanced Rock Weathering Greenhouse Gas Removal Demonstrator’ (UK ERW GGR-D) projects that are investigating the viability of ERW as a CDR technique.
:
https://noc.ac.uk/n/Christopher+Pearce
Developing the insights, tools and guidelines required for safe and effective implementation of appropriate ocean-based CDR approaches. Wednesday @ 3:20 PM