The “Stressors and Drivers of Food Security: Evidence from Scientific Collections” symposium will be held on 18-20 May 2016. This will be the first-ever symposium that brings together food security researchers and experts on scientific collections in diverse research disciplines. The symposium will be an ambitious look forward into food security research that relies on evidence drawn from scientific across a broad range of disciplines.
The symposium prospectus and preliminary agenda can be found at https://goo.gl/V9I5pL.
Participation will be limited to 100 and attendees will be selected to ensure a productive mixture of:
- Researchers using diverse approaches to basic and applied research on food security and insecurity; and
- Representatives of scientific collections in anthropology, archaeology, biomedicine, biodiversity, ecology, ethnobiology, geology, paleontology, parasitology, veterinary sciences, and others.
The US Department of Agriculture will host the symposium at the National Agriculture Library in Beltsville, Maryland, just outside Washington, DC, on Wednesday to Friday, 18-20 May 2016. The symposium is being organized by Scientific Collections International.
The keynote speakers will be:
- Dr. Ann Bartuska, Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education & Economics, US Department of Agriculture, an ecosystems ecologist and USDA representative to the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES);
- Dr. Vera Lucia Imperatriz-Fonseca, a pollination biologist at the University of Sao Paolo, Brazil, and Co-Chair of the IPBES Experts for thematic assessment of pollinators, pollination and food production; and
- Dr. Gary Nabhan, an ethnobiologist, agroecologist, conservation biologist, cultural geographer, and W.K. Kellogg Chair in Southwest Borderlands Food and Water Security at the University of Arizona.
Express your interest in participating at http://goo.gl/forms/IFzsKjVJjx.