Open seminar by Prof Peter Mahaffy (KCVS) hosted by Sarah Cornell at SRC. Peter Mahaffy is Professor of Chemistry at The King’s University, Edmonton, Canada and Director of the King’s Centre for Visualization in Science.
He and Sarah are currently working together on international initiatives on systems thinking and chemistry education for sustainability.

The talk will take about an hour, and then there will be fika an informal discussions.

Abstract

The sustainability challenges facing our planet are so pressing that they require urgent attention by science through a convergence of disciplinary approaches. Chemistry, the science of transformation of matter, has a central role to play in addressing the unintended consequences that arise from the large-scale material transformation by humans over the past fifty years. How can we fully realize chemistry’s role in the emergence of sustainability, beginning with the molecular basis of sustainability and integrating sustainability orientations, tools, and frameworks into the practice of chemistry and chemistry education? We take a systems approach to this question and draw on the chemistry of refrigerants and reactive nitrogen to illustrate how our profession can transform itself through systems thinking to better contribute at multiple levels toward the emergence of sustainability of the Earth system. Visualization plays a vital role in reimagining chemistry education, and we will introduce an interactive learning tool recently released by our King’s Centre for Visualization in Science (kcvs.ca) in collaboration with an IUPAC project and with Sarah Cornell at SRC, which uses the Planetary Boundaries framework to connect fundamental chemistry concepts and measurements to sustainability challenges and opportunities.