More than 40% of the world's population lives within 100 km (60 mi) of a coastline. How can we continue to sustain both these communities and the invaluable coastal ecosystems in which they reside? This year's MIT Water Summit seeks to explore the unique issues facing coastal cities and ecosystems by investigating the balance between the built and natural environment. Hosted by the MIT Water Club, the MIT Water Summit is an annual two-day event that brings together leaders from industry, government, and the scientific community to discuss the greatest challenges and opportunities in the water sector. This year’s Summit will be a hybrid event with both in-person and virtual components!
In addition to a number of excellent keynote speakers and presentations, we will host various panels of experts who will focus on the following topics:
Coastal and Ocean Agriculture
Coastal Ecosystems
Coastal Conflict and Governance
Keynotes
Samantha Montano
Dr. Samantha Montano is an assistant professor at Massachusetts Maritime Academy where she teaches courses on issues related to emergency management and disaster policy. Her doctoral degree is in emergency management from North Dakota State University. Her research interests cut across areas of interest to emergency management including nonprofits, volunteerism, and informal aid efforts in disaster, the intersection of disasters and climate change, gender disparities in disaster, and disaster media coverage. She is the author of the new book Disasterology: Dispatches from The Frontlines of The Climate Crisis. She is an advocate for emergency management policy reform and disaster justice.
Kelsey Leonard
Dr. Kelsey Leonard is a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Waters, Climate and Sustainability and an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo, where her research focuses on Indigenous water justice and its climatic, territorial, and governance underpinnings. Dr. Leonard seeks to establish Indigenous traditions of water conservation as the foundation for international water policymaking. Dr. Leonard has been instrumental in safeguarding the interests of Indigenous Nations for environmental planning and builds Indigenous science and knowledge into new solutions for water governance and sustainable oceans. In collaboration with a global team of water law scholars Dr. Leonard has published in Lewis and Clark Law Review on Indigenous Water Justice and the defining international legal principle of self-determination under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Kotchakorn Voraakhom
Kotchakorn Voraakhom is a landscape architect from Thailand who works on building productive green public spaces that tackle climate change in urban dense areas and vulnerable communities. She created the first critical green infrastructure for Bangkok, the Chulalongkorn Centenary Park. Her complete design works also include, Thammasat Urban Farm Rooftop, a 36-acre urban farm rooftop featuring the biggest urban farming green roof in Asia, and the first bridge park across the river in any world capital, Chao Phraya Sky Park. Voraakhom was awarded from UN climate change for Winners of the 2020 UN Global Climate Action Awards, Women for Results. She was featured in the 2019 “TIME 100 Next” list, one of 15 leading women fighting against climate change from TIME Magazine, BBC 100 Women 2020, and the “Green 30 for 2020” by Bloomberg. She is Chairwoman of the Climate Change Working Group of the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA World). Voraakhom received her Master's in landscape architecture from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and teach there as a design critic in Spring 2020. Currently, she is also a TED Fellow and an Echoing Green Fellow.
Jainey Bavishi
Jainey K. Bavishi serves as the Director of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate Resiliency, which tackles the challenge of climate change through science-based analysis, policy and program development, and capacity building. She previously served as the Associate Director for Climate Preparedness at the White House Council on Environmental Quality under President Barack Obama. Bavishi has a Master’s degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor’s degree in public policy and cultural anthropology from Duke University.
Presentations
Emerald Tutu
Julia Hopkins
Dr. Julia Hopkins is an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University studying the physical underpinnings and design parameters of nature-based solutions for climate-changed coastal communities. After finishing her PhD in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in 2017, she spent 3 years in the Netherlands to investigate sand-based flood protections at the TU Delft. Since her return to Boston, MA, she used this experience as a co-founder of the nature-based coastal infrastructure startup called the Emerald Tutu. As faculty at Northeastern, her research focuses on adapting nature-based resilience solutions to the varied coastal communities of the world. Current and forthcoming projects include: studying the physical mechanisms which allow floating wetlands to prevent coastal inundation, characterizing the compounded effects of waves and currents on shoreline evolution, developing design parameters based on stakeholder feedback to climate change scenarios, and developing novel field observation techniques to observe beach changes during extreme events such as hurricanes.
Project Tidal
Grace Young
Dr Grace Young is a Senior Research Engineer and Lead Scientist at X, Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory (formerly GoogleX), where her team is creating radical new technologies to protect the ocean while feeding humanity sustainably. An avid sailor, diver and National Geographic Explorer, Grace is passionate about developing tools to better understand, explore and manage the ocean. She earned her BSc in Mechanical & Ocean Engineering from MIT ('14), where she won the Wallace Prize as MIT’s top ocean engineering undergraduate, the Keil Award for excellence in ocean engineering research, and the Wiesner Institute Award for advancing art and technology. She received her PhD as a Marshal Scholar at the University of Oxford ('18), where she was a member of the Zoology Department's Ocean Research and Conservation Group and the Engineering Department's Active Vision Laboratory. In 2019, she filmed the National Geographic documentary “Ocean's Breath” that explores connections between 300 million year old fossils in mountains and modern coral reefs. She has developed robots, imaging systems, and other technologies for MIT, CERN, NASA, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In 2014 she lived underwater for 15 days as a mission scientist on Fabien Cousteau's Mission 31, the youngest Aquarius aquanaut at the time. A former ballerina, she's active in arts communities; her exhibition of ultra-high speed photography captured while living underwater was selected as “Best of Oceans at MIT 2015.” Grace was a four-year varsity letterman on MIT's sailing team and sailed across the Atlantic for the non-profit SailFuture. Grace also serves as Chief Scientist for the Pisces VI deep sea research submarine.
Laura Chrobak
Laura Chrobak is an ocean engineer specializing in underwater vision and machine learning and a research scientist on Tidal: a team at X working to protect the ocean and preserve its ability to support life and feed humanity, sustainably. At Tidal, she works with their underwater camera system to develop machine perception tools that bring visibility into fish health and behavior in the aquaculture space. She has a master’s in robotics from the University of Michigan where she worked in the Deep Robot Optical Perception Lab and a BS from the University of California, Berkeley in mechanical engineering where she spent a term as a visiting student at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) through the MIT-WHOI joint program. Laura loves working at the cross section of ocean technology and climate solutions; getting her feet wet through field work; and collaborating with the diverse oceanographic community to tackle complex real ocean problems!
Special Presentations
Catherine Seavitt Nordenson
Catherine Seavitt Nordenson is a professor and director of the graduate landscape architecture program at the Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York. Her work explores adaptation to climate change in urban environments and the novel transformation of landscape restoration practices. She also examines the intersection of political power, environmental activism, and public health, particularly as seen through the design of equitable public space and policy. Her books include Depositions: Roberto Burle Marx and Public Landscapes under Dictatorship (University of Texas Press, 2018); Structures of Coastal Resilience (Island Press, 2018); Waterproofing New York (Urban Research Press, 2016); and On the Water: Palisade Bay (Hatje Cantz, 2010).
Paul Kirshen
Paul Kirshen has more than 40 years of experience serving as Principal Investigator of complex, interdisciplinary, participatory research related to water resources, coastal zone, and infrastructure management, and climate variability and change. He was a Lead Author of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (water resources in North America) and the 2014 US National Climate Assessment (coastal zone). He works at scales ranging from local to international. He has been conducting research and consulting on the integrated vulnerability of metro Boston and Massachusetts to present and future climates and adaptation/management strategies since 1990. Recent adaptation experience has also been in other parts of the northeastern US and the Caribbean. He has over 100 journal articles on these topics and numerous technical reports. His research on impacts of climate change has been cited by the US Supreme Court and has won several professional and civic awards. He received his ScB in Engineering from Brown University and his MS and PhD in Civil Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Catherine McCandless
Catherine is a Climate Change and Environmental Planning Project Manager with the City of Boston's Environment Department. In this role, she works on the Climate Ready Boston initiative and with the Boston Conservation Commission on the development of neighborhood climate resilience planning, wetlands protection and restoration projects, and the integration of climate change preparedness into municipal planning, projects, and permit review. Prior to joining the Environment Department, Catherine was an Environmental Planner at VHB where she worked on sustainability and resiliency planning projects and managed the environmental and development review permitting processes for private and public development projects in Greater Boston. She began her career at the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation, where she worked on the development of affordable housing projects, and subsequently served as the Assistant to the Director of Planning at the Boston Planning and Development Agency. Originally from Durham, NC, Catherine received her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture and Biology from Wellesley College and her Master in Urban Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Brian Davis
Brian Davis, PLA, is an Associate Professor in Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia, a member of the Dredge Research Collaborative, and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. His research and practice develops forms of civic space and ecological resilience through innovative coastal infrastructure in the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay regions. He focuses on sediment as the fundamental material of coastal, cultural landscapes that perform infrastructural services and enhance habitat. At UVA he teaches design studios as well as classes on construction technology and landscape theory.
Kristina Hill
Kristina Hill is an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Hill studies urban ecology and hydrology in relationship to physical design and social justice issues. Her primary area of work is in adapting urban districts and shorezones to the new challenges associated with climate change. Prof. Hill currently focuses her research on adaptation and coastal design in the San Francisco Bay Area, but engages in comparative studies in the US Mid-Atlantic, Europe, and Hawaii. Before coming to Berkeley, she served as chair of the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Virginia. Her book, Ecology and Design: Frameworks for Learning, was published by Island Press in 2002, and her current book project proposes adapting urban waterfronts to climate change while incorporating productive ecosystems.
Philip Loring
Dr. Philip Loring is a human ecologist and storyteller at the University of Guelph, whose work focuses on the intersection of sustainability, food systems, and social justice, and he is particularly interested in solutions where people and ecosystems thrive together. He studied at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and his research has taken him to such diverse places as the temperate rainforests of British Columbia, the prairies of Saskatchewan, the highlands of Guatemala, and the Sonoran Desert in Mexico. An avid science communicator, Loring emphasizes writing, film, and other forms of storytelling to reach diverse audiences. His first book, Finding Our Niche: Toward a Restorative Human Ecology, was published in 2020 by Fernwood Press.
Murty Jonnalagadda
Murty Jonnalagadda has a degree in Architecture and a masters in Urban planning from India. He also holds a masters degree in International rural development planning from University of Guelph, Canada. Murty has more than 30 years of experience in the water sector, working in local governance and policymaking as well as with institutions. He worked in the Aga Khan Development Network for 10 years and at the World Bank for 10 years. Murty now lives in Mumbai and for the past 10 years he has continued to work as a consultant for the World Bank and other such agencies.
Panels
Coastal Agriculture
Joyce Chen
Dr. Joyce Chen is an Associate Professor in Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics at The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on the complex relationships between migration, climate change, economic development, and the intra-household allocation of resources. She is also active in efforts aimed at enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion within academia in particular.
Hauke Kite-Powell
Dr. Hauke L. Kite-Powell is a Research Specialist at the Marine Policy Center of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He holds degrees in marine engineering and ocean systems management from MIT. Dr. Kite-Powell’s research focuses on public and private sector management issues for marine resources. Current research projects include work on: costs and benefits from improved ocean observing activities; approaches to economic valuation of marine resources; policy issues surrounding use of ocean “space” for non-traditional activities, such as aquaculture and wind power; and economics and management of marine aquaculture operations.
Trey Angera
Andrea (Trey) Angera is the General Counsel and COO of Springtide Seaweed, LLC- the largest fully integrated organic seaweed farm and producer in North America based in Downeast Maine. He has extensive experience in the development of organic food systems, including sourcing, processing, distribution, and marketing, and in business development and technologies. Over thirty years of software engineering and development work including enterprise solutions in the legal, aviation, agriculture, and aquaculture industries has made him a valued thought leader in the aquaculture sector. He has engineered, designed and constructed aquaculture and nursery systems for seaweed and other species. His recent work has been on smart aquaculture gear and deep water aquaculture.
Coastal Ecosystems I
Heidi Nepf
Dr. Nepf received her doctorate from Stanford University (1992) and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution before beginning her career at MIT in 1993. She is internationally known for her work on the impact of vegetation on currents, waves, and sediment transport in channels, wetlands, and coastal zones. The Nepf Lab develops models for the physical processes that determine how vegetated habitats, such as seagrasses, marshes, and mangroves, provide coastal protection, impact landscape stability, improve water quality, and provide blue carbon reservoirs. In recognition of her work, she was selected for a NSF Career Award, the Borland Lecture, the Chapman Lecture, the Harold Schoemaker Best Paper Award [IAHR], 2019 ASCE Hunter Rouse Award, and a Distinguished Alumni Award from Bucknell University. In 2018 she was elected as a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
Loretta Roberson
Dr. Loretta Roberson of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a Southern California native who studied kelps starting as an undergraduate at California State University Northridge where she received a BS in Biology, and also for her PhD in Biological Sciences from Stanford University at Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, CA. In 2003 she became Adjunct and later Assistant Professor at the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras campus in San Juan where she developed and directed the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainability that focused on using macroalgae as biomass for biofuels, as well as the Puerto Rico Center for Environmental Neuroscience, with a focus on the impact of water quality on coastal ecosystems. In 2016 she joined the MBL where she is now Associate Scientist. Her research focuses on the development of large-scale, offshore macroalgae farms and how they may be used to protect sensitive ecosystems like coral reefs.
Ann Michelle Morrison
Dr. Ann Michelle Morrison is a principal scientist in Exponent’s Ecological and Biological Sciences Practice. Dr. Morrison’s academic and professional career has focused on evaluating the impacts of human activity on environmental and public health. Prior to joining Exponent, Dr. Morrison studied the impacts of human activity on reef and seagrass communities in Bermuda; the impacts of antifungal chemicals on fish enzyme function at Harvard School of Public Health and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; and the impacts of rainfall-associated sewage releases on water quality conditions at Boston public recreational beaches. Dr. Morrison’s work at Exponent frequently involves natural resource damage assessment (NRDA) and restoration, environmental causal analysis, and assessments of water quality conditions and net environmental benefits. Projects Dr. Morrison has been involved with have concerned oil spills, sewage releases, heavy metal contamination, polychlorinated biphenyls, coal ash, phosphate mining, harmful algal blooms, water consumption, and various industrial and municipal facilities that have generated complex releases to the environment.
Coastal Ecosystems II
Amy Schmid
As Manager of Blue Carbon Innovations, Amy coordinates all program development initiatives for Verra’s programs that are related to blue carbon. In this capacity, she identifies, develops and implements improvements to program requirements and processes. She also explores opportunities for the scaling up of nature-based innovations activities, leading Verra’s work on blue carbon, including the Blue Carbon WG. Previously, Amy served as a Senior Program Officer and Program Officer at Verra. Prior to joining Verra, Amy conducted research at the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS) on the effect of forest disturbance on the drivers and rate of carbon exchange between the forest and atmosphere. Amy holds a Master’s degree in Biology from Virginia Commonwealth University where she focused on the ecology of the forest carbon cycle. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biology with a specialization in Environmental and Biological Conservation from the University of Virginia.
Sergio Fagherazzi
Sergio Fagherazzi is a professor of surface processes and marine sciences at the Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University. He obtained a Doctoral Degree in Hydrodynamics in 1999 at the Department of Environmental, Maritime, Geotechnical, and Hydraulic Engineering, University of Padua, Italy. His primary study interest concerns the evolution of coastal environments. His research activities cover all aspects of coastal morphodynamics, including ecology and geomorphology of salt marshes and mangrove forests, coastline erosion, dynamics of tidal flats and tidal channels, and long-term evolution of the shoreline caused by sea level rise and climate change. He is a member of the editorial board for Earth Surface Processes and Landforms.
Chris Esposito
Dr. Esposito has over a decade experience studying sediment transport and deposition in river deltas. His research is focused on the connections between river channels and their floodplains where he specializes in the use of green infrastructure to direct sediment to target locations, a topic which is closely related to planning related to river diversions on the Mississippi River. Prior to entering graduate school, Dr. Esposito taught math and environmental education in public high schools, and developed a field-based experiential education program for adjudicated youths in rural South Louisiana. His interest in the science of coastal restoration was sparked while leading students on field trips throughout the Mississippi River Delta.
Maria Claudia
Maria Claudia is currently the director of the Blue Carbon program at Conservation International. She has more than 25 years of experience in research, management and conservation of strategic aquatic, marine and coastal species and ecosystems in Latin America, especially in Colombia and in partnership with countries such as Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru and Mexico. In the last 14 years she led Conservation International's Oceans program in Colombia, providing strategic and programmatic leadership not only in the country but also at the regional level (ETP and Peru); leading and developing innovative financial mechanisms at the national scale, including the first blue carbon credit project in Colombia; and leading the relationship between CI and various international and multilateral organizations such as CEMARIN, NOAA (US Government), the Permanent Commission for the South Pacific (CPPS), the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the Conservation Corridor of the Eastern Tropical Pacific (CMAR) and the Inter-American Sea Turtle Commission (IAC). In her current role, she is helping to implement climate change strategies focused on the conservation and restoration of strategic coastal ecosystems at country level, not only in the Americas but also advising countries in Africa and Asia-Pacific.
Coastal Conflict and Governance
Marjo Vierros
Marjo Vierros has worked on issues related to global ocean policy and ecology for over twenty years. She is currently director of Coastal Policy and Humanities Research, a Vancouver-based consultancy, and a Senior Policy Associate at the Global Ocean Forum. She has worked for United Nations organizations, universities and NGOs in in the Caribbean, Central America, Pacific and North America. Her recent work has examined the role of the ocean as an interconnected ecological and cultural space. She argues that a greater emphasis on equity, respect for traditional knowledge, and incorporating rights of nature frameworks can help improve ocean governance globally, build more just blue economies, and help reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
David Herrera
Dave Herrera is a member of the Skokomish Indian Tribe and serves as the tribe’s Fisheries and Wildlife Policy Representative. He also serves on the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, where he is Chair of the Environmental Policy Committee. In addition, he was appointed by Governor Inslee to serve on the State Forest Practices Board. Dave has worked in tribal fisheries and natural resources management for more than 30 years. He worked his way from a natural resource technician in the field to fisheries manager, where he developed and negotiated complex annual harvest and conservation agreements. Today, as a policy leader, he is involved in building and advancing policies critical to salmon and ecosystem recovery across the Pacific Northwest. Over the last 10 years, seeing explosive growth across the region, and the specter of global climate change, Dave has taken on habitat issues through many forums including the Puget Sound Partnership’s Ecosystem Coordination Board and Salmon Recovery Council. Dave works locally in the Skokomish River watershed in Washington state, regionally in the Salish Sea, and nationally in Washington, D.C., to develop and advance recovery plans to protect treaty rights and recover the salmon that are necessary to tribal communities and lifeways.
Ona Ferguson
Ona Ferguson is a Senior Mediator at the Consensus Building Institute, where she facilitates natural resource and policy dialogues and disputes. She specializes in helping groups work through complex topics, planning and running meetings on shoreline management, local land use decisions, ecosystem restoration, climate planning, superfund clean ups and network strategic planning. Ona currently facilitates community advisory groups for two superfund site clean ups, jointly leads the city of Somerville, MA’s Climate Ambassadors Program, co-facilitates the Forest for All NYC coalition working to enhance the tree canopy in NYC and is part of a team leading engagement for New York State’s upcoming climate assessment. Ona has a Master’s Degree from the Yale School of the Environment and a BA from Smith College.
