Environmental Studies

Events

Environmental Affairs Symposium - Keynote Presentation

Date: October 12 2011 8:00pm - 9:00pm Location: Templeton Campus Center - Council Chamber

The Great Urban Transition: New Opportunities and Challenges for Humanity’s Relationship with the Environment

 

Dr. Luís Bettencourt is a Research Scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.  His research interests center on the structure and dynamics of diverse complex phenomena, ranging from the emergence and spread of diseases to the social dynamics of innovation and discovery.  His work on cities investigates how rates of innovation, wealth creation, crime, or disease incidence scale with city size, identifying common “laws” in such relationships and suggesting implications for the growth and sustainability of human communities.  Dr. Bettencourt holds a Licenciatura in Engineering Physics from the Instituto Superior Tecníco in Lisbon, Portugal and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Imperial College, University of London.  He has held postdoctoral positions at Heidelberg University, MIT, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.  His work on “Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities” has been highlighted by Scientific American, New Scientist, Harvard Business Review, and the premier scientific journal Nature.  Dr. Bettencourt also consults for the U. S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science and Technology Information about scientific innovation and discovery.