We are pleased to announce this year's keynote speakers:
Brian D. Fath
Urban sustainability: Ecological network analysis tracking metabolism through indirect pathways
Brian D. Fath is a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Towson University (Maryland, USA) teaching courses on Ecosystem Ecology, Environmental Science, and Human Ecology. He is also a Senior Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Laxenburg, Austria) and since 2011, the Scientific Coordinator of IIASA’ s Young Scientists Summer Program. He has published over 200 research papers, reports, and book chapters on environmental systems modeling, specifically in the areas of network analysis, urban metabolism, and sustainability. He co-authored, among others, the books A New Ecology: Systems Perspective (2020), Foundations for Sustainability: A Coherent Framework of Life–Environment Relations (2019), and Flourishing within Limits to Growth: Following Nature’s Way (2015). He served as Editor for 6-volume Handbook of Environmental Management (2020) and 4-volume Encyclopedia of Ecology (2019).
Dr. Fath is also Editor-in-Chief for the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Resource Management and past Editor in Chief of Ecological Modelling (2009 – 2020). He was the 2016 recipient of the Prigogine Medal for outstanding work in systems ecology and twice a Fulbright Distinguished Chair (Parthenope University, Naples, Italy, in 2012 and Masaryk University, Czech Republic, in 2019).
Aristide Athanassiadis
Urban Metabolism in times of socio-ecological crisis
Aristide Athanassiadis has been a researcher and teacher in urban and territorial metabolism for over ten years. He studies in his research the physical flows (water, energy, materials, pollutants) which enter and leave our territories to understand the engines of our consumption and its impact. He teaches this theme at the Libre University of Brussels, SciencesPo Paris and at the Federal Polytechnic School in Lausanne and had the opportunity to work with many territories to assess their metabolism and propose action plans.
After these different years of research and support, he created and hosts the Circular Metabolism podcast to illustrate the complexity of the issues of understanding the “metabolic” functioning of our territories and show that the solutions proposed fall into silos, often making them counterproductive, even deleterious.
Noel Fitzpatrick
Locality, Idiom and the Smart City
Noel Fitzpatrick is Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics (doc dès lettres, Paris VII), and the Dean of GradCAM (since 2012). He is also the Head of Leaning and Research Development at the College of Arts and Tourism at the TU Dublin (Dublin Institute of Technology). He teaches Philosophy of Technology and Aesthetics to postgraduate and doctoral students at TU Dublin, he supervises Post-Doctoral and PhD students at GradCAM in the College of Arts and Tourism. Noel gives seminars on phenomenology, hermeneutics, philosophy of technology at the Graduate School. He is a leading member of the European Artistic Research Network, SHARE and European Society of Aesthetics. Noel is a member of Ars Industrialis, (Founded by Bernard Stiegler) and a founding member of the Digital Studies Network at the l’institut de recherche et innovation (IRI) at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. He is also the director of the ECT lab+ (European Culture and Technology laboratory) and consortium leader of the NEST (Networking Ecologically Smart Territories) and EPISTEAM (Epistemology in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Maths) MSCA projects, among other.
