Blue Tech and The Blue Economy
Friday, September 21, 2018, 9:00-noon
(continental breakfast provided at 8:30)
Marine Science Institute Auditorium, UCSB
California is home to a rich community of ocean research institutions, technology innovators, and environmental conservation leaders with hubs of collaboration all along the coast. UCSB is a leader in marine science and engineering, and actively transfers knowledge to promote the understanding, sustainable use and conservation of ocean resources. Novel insights and tools born out of a research mission are critical as we balance conservation and sustainable ocean economic development.
In two panels, we will explore the cutting edge of ocean technology development through the lens of UCSB scientists and external collaborators. In the first, conservation practitioners will discuss the process of developing hardware and software to the benefit of the ocean environment as well as opportunities and challenges of producing technologies as a non-profit entity. In the second, we will consider the importance of the expanding global ocean economy and a potential Blue Economy vision for UCSB and Santa Barbara as academia, industry and policy makers collaborate to develop a regional Blue Voice.
Please RSVP by Friday, September 13: http://bit.ly/BlueEventRSVP
Panelists
Dmitry Fedorov, ViQi, Inc.
Dmitry is the Chief Technology Officer at ViQi, Inc., in Goleta, California, and formerly a Researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As a member of the Vision Lab at UCSB, Dmitry helped develop Bisque, a web based, cross-platform and open source platform for bioimage analysis and management.
Will McDonald, Pelagic Data Systems
Will McDonald co-founded Pelagic Data Systems in 2014 to bring the life-improving benefits of big data to fishing communities around the world and leads the development of PDS’s technology. With a background in Computer Science, he has been developing software since the 90s and has had hardware and software development roles at both large international and early stage tech companies. Will is driven by his belief that technology can be used to help solve social and environmental problems.
Michael Jones, The Maritime Alliance
Michael is President of The Maritime Alliance (TMA), which is the largest U.S. BlueTech cluster with over 100 corporate members. It's Mission Statement is Promoting Sustainable, Science-Based Ocean & Water Industries. Originally focused on San Diego, CA, it has a growing base of members nationally and internationally and is in the process of launching a chapter in Baja California. He is a non-resident Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University SAIS in Washington, DC, focused on the Blue Economy.
Alex Kehaya, Orchid labs
Alex Kehaya is an entrepreneur, educator, and software developer currently working in business development at Orchid Labs.Orchid Labs is crypto currency startup building a decentralized market place for computational resources, bandwidth, and data storage. Over the past decade, he has worked with businesses from Fortune 500 companies to fast growing startups to aid them in discovering scalable business models for new products and services across many varying markets. Alex pioneered entrepreneurial studies over 100 schools around the country, helping to launch programs by adapting Steve Blank's customer development curriculum for high school and middle school students. In addition to his work with middle and high school aged students, he has been a lecturer at UCSB's Technology Management Program and the Bren School's Eco-E program for the last four years. His expertise is in early stage market validation and he is passionate about creating positive change in education and the environment through the commercialization of new technologies and business models.
Will McClintock, UCSB
Will is a Project Scientist at the UCSB Marine Science Institute and Senior Fellow at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. His lab develops and implements software for marine assessment and planning including SeaSketch (www.seaksetch.org) which is used world wide for the collaborative design of ocean zones. He received his B.S. from Earlham College, M.S. from the University of Cincinnati, and Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology from UCSB.
Matt Merrifield, The Nature Conservancy
As Chief Technology Officer in The Nature Conservancy’s California Chapter, Matt is responsible for research, strategy, and application of technology solutions to serve the Conservancy’s mission. He has 20 years of experience in the field of geospatial technology that encompasses geographic information science, remote sensing, GPS, and drones. He currently leads a team responsible for spatial planning, analysis and technology focused solutions that can have big impacts in social-ecological systems. Matt is currently working on ways that Artificial Intelligence can be utilized in various aspects of the Conservancy's work with a deep focus on fisheries. He will also be going back to his geospatial roots and supporting a global scale mapping effort of Marine Protected Areas that will leverage the Conservancy's deep network of GIS practitioners in field.
Jessica Morten, Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary
Jess Morten is a Resource Protection Specialist for NOAA Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary through the California Marine Sanctuary Foundation and the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. After serving in 2016 as the California Sea Grant Fellow for the sanctuary, she now serves as a project coordinator on a range of Resource Protection efforts across west coast sanctuaries, including reducing the threat of ship strikes on endangered whales and enhancing sanctuary enforcement efforts through the piloting of new tools and technologies. Prior to joining the Channel Islands team, Jess has worked for Environmental Defense Fund, Wildlife Trust, and the University of Washington. She has a BA in Environmental Studies from Skidmore College and MA in International Environmental Policy from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.
Nick Nidzieko, UCSB
Nick is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at UCSB. He is also affiliated with the Marine Science Institute and Earth Research Institute. He uses autonomous platforms to make novel observations as part of his research in coastal oceanography, which is focused on estuarine & coastal circulation and the role of physical processes in biogeochemical cycling. He received a B.S. from UCLA in 2000 and Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2009.
Matthew Pickett, Oceans Unmanned
Commander Matthew Pickett, NOAA (Ret) spent twenty years providing operational support for NOAA aboard ships, small boats, aircraft, and diving. He has twelve years experience supporting the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, including three years as the Superintendent of CINMS. His aviation experience includes remote sensing and living marine resource surveys and small UAS missions supporting environmental research and monitoring requirements.
Shah Selbe, National Geographic
Shah Selbe is an engineer and conservation technologist who works with communities, NGOs, and developing countries to identify and deploy technologies that can help with their greatest conservation challenges. His projects have integrated crowdsourcing, smartphone apps, drones, satellite data, and sensors to address such conservation issues as illegal poaching and the monitoring of protected areas. He founded a conservation technology makerspace and prototyping lab, Conservify, which uses open source technology to empower local communities to change our planet’s future. He has built and deployed low-cost conservation drones for coastal monitoring, open source environmental monitoring sensor networks in the Okavango Delta, acoustic monitoring buoys in the Pacific, and more. Selbe is a National Geographic Society Fellow, New England Aquarium Ocean Conservation Fellow, and PopTech Social Innovation Fellow. He is developing an open source hardware and web open science platform called FieldKit (fieldkit.org) that will help researchers, students, and explorers share live environmental and field data on an interactive site. He is building an extensive library of open source sensor systems that can be used in science and conservation research. Before becoming a conservation technologist, Selbe spent 10 years as a rocket scientist building and launching satellites with Boeing.