Day 3

Alan Hastings is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Davis.  His research focuses on a broad range of topics in theoretical ecology, with an emphasis on using concepts from dynamical systems to look carefully at ecological processes over space and time.  He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Ecological Society of America, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and the Society for Mathematical Biology. He received his BA in mathematics and his MS and PhD in applied mathematics from Cornell University.

Iain Couzin is Director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Department of Collective Behaviour and the Chair of Biodiversity and Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz, Germany and  Previously he was a Full Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, and prior to that a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, and a Junior Research Fellow in the Sciences at Balliol College, Oxford. His work aims to reveal the fundamental principles that underlie evolved collective behavior, and consequently his research includes the study of a wide range of biological systems, from insect swarms to fish schools and primate groups. In recognition of his research he has been recipient of the Searle Scholar Award in 2008, top 5 most cited papers of the decade in animal behavior research 1999-2010, the Mohammed Dahleh Award in 2009, Popular Science’s “Brilliant 10” Award in 2010, National Geographic Emerging Explorer Award in 2012, the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London in 2013, a Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics, formerly Thompson Reuters) Global Highly Cited Researcher in 2018, 2019 and 2020 and the Lagrange Prize in 2019. https://collectivebehaviour.com/people/couzin-iain/

Carl Boettiger began his career in ecology by making the mistake as an ignorant undergraduate physics major: asking professor Levin how to make ecology more mathematical. Simon soon taught him how if physics teaches hubris, ecology teaches humility. After a few years of lab teas with mind-blowing ecology and excellent snacks, Carl went West to pursue a PhD in population biology with Alan Hastings at UC Davis. He took a postdoctoral fellowship to UC Santa Cruz before accepting his present position as an assistant professor in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley, where his work focuses on stochasticity, uncertainty, and decision making in complex ecological systems. He is still sometimes mistaken for his identical twin, Alistair.

Dr. Andrew Tilman is a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, studying eco-evolutionary feedbacks in game theoretic contexts. He completed a PhD in ecology at Princeton University, advised by Simon Levin, where his theoretical work focused on the management of common-pool resources. He uses approaches from ecology, economics, and game theory to seek policies and mechanisms that can jointly promote social, economic, and environmental wins, both when there can be effective top-down governance and in its absence.

Dr. Theresa Ong is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and Ecology, Evolution, Environment & Society at Dartmouth College. She is an agroecologist who combines theory with empirical work in agricultural systems to understand how complex interactions between the environment, organisms, and people ultimately influence food production and ecosystem stability. She received her PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan and was an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton University in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Her work focuses on how biocomplexity in terms of space, time, and species diversity influences the resilience of agricultural systems to both ecological and political perturbations.

Abstract: Land in many cities is a limited resource. This is particularly true of techno-boom cities where emerging economic powers compete with agents that may have previously occupied urban landscapes for long time periods but with little land security. Competition for land is rarely equal; land-use sectors competitively lobby for zoning, while land insecurity and economic conditions constrain the ability for individual agents to gain or hold land. Here we build a socio-ecological model to examine the role of competition and land insecurity in overall urban land-use change. We compare our modeled results to observed land-use changes in three Northern Californian cities that represent a range of economic and land security levels existing in a shared landscape where land is at a premium. We find that rapid urban development increases abundance of vacant lots and urban gardens when land insecurity is high, perhaps explaining the emergence of shrinking cities amidst fast-paced urbanization. Urban gardens play pivotal roles in linking periods of economic growth and decline by providing moderate amounts of utility in both good and bad times, a result that is notably consistent with many historic and current day examples. Our results suggest that increasing the land security of multi-purpose land-use states like urban gardens may help pull cities out of economic recessions and that restricting the size of economic markets can reduce surges in vacant lots, the trademarks of a shrinking city.

Jonathan Dushoff is a Professor of Biology in McMaster University. He is a theoretical biologist with a wide variety of interests. His primary focus is the evolution and spread of infectious diseases, with a particular interest in human health. He has been active in the response to the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak and the current COVID-19 outbreak. His longer-term interests include canine rabies in Africa and Asia; HIV; and influenza. He is also interested in statistical philosophy and practice, and in questions of biodiversity and ecology. He is also a founder and co-director of ICI3D, an Africa-based capacity-building program for infectious-disease modeling.

Alan Hastings is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Davis.  His research focuses on a broad range of topics in theoretical ecology, with an emphasis on using concepts from dynamical systems to look carefully at ecological processes over space and time.  He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Ecological Society of America, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and the Society for Mathematical Biology. He received his BA in mathematics and his MS and PhD in applied mathematics from Cornell University.

Artist Laureate Award Winner

Emmy®Award Winner

Oscar® Nominator, Contributor

Grammy Global Music Judge

Vietnamese National Champion

"To say Võ is making a splash is an understatement. Her compositions' rippling blend of musical genres and music played on her native country's instruments and often sung with her luminous vocals, have mesmerized musicians and audiences alike." —San Francisco Classical Voice

Vân-Ánh Võ dedicates her life to creating music by blending the unique sounds of Vietnamese instruments with varieties of music genres, and fusing deeply rooted Vietnamese musical traditions with fresh new structures and compositions. Since settling in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2001, Vân-Ánh has been focusing on collaborating with musicians across different styles, cultures and genres to create new works, bringing Vietnamese traditional music to a wider audience and preserving her cultural legacy through teaching. Her music reimagines traditional music to contemporary forms, bridging the previous with the current while bringing Vietnamese art music to the next generation.

Her first LP, Twelve Months, Four Seasons (2002) explores cycles of seasons and nature, motifs that are deeply rooted within Vân-Ánh’s heritage. In her next studio release, She’s Not She (2009) with award-winning composer Bảo Đỗ, she uses folk music as the medium to explore critical turning points, using its sonic expression to portray the pivots that shifts our nature and foci. Vân-Ánh’s Three-Mountain Pass, her third studio album, (2013) was selected as an NPR Top 10 World Music CD. Three-Mountain Pass brings voices of Vietnamese women pioneers and celebrates their courage that allowed future women to have the freedom to speak, to examine and to expand the creation of Vietnamese art music. Vân-Ánh has been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma, Southwest Chamber Music, Oakland Symphony, Monterey Symphony, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, and collaborated with jazz, rap, and global music artists. Additionally, she has co-composed and arranged for the Oscar® nominated and Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner for Best Documentary, Daughter from Danang (2002), the Emmy® Awards winning film and soundtrack for Bolinao 52 (2008), and A Village Called Versailles (2009).

In addition to the zither (đàn Tranh) Vân-Ánh also performs as soloist on the monochord (đàn Bầu), the bamboo xylophone (đàn T’rung), traditional drums (trống) and many other traditional instruments.

More recently, Vân-Ánh is also the artistic director of her Blood Moon Orchestra, a genre-bending musical collective that defies the bounds of Vietnamese traditional music, hip-hop/rap, and breakdance.

For more information, please visit: www.vananhvo.com

Simon Levin is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. He is interested in understanding how macroscopic patterns and processes are maintained at the ecosystem and biosphere levels, in terms of ecological and evolutionary mechanisms. Professor Levin is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and a Foreign Member of the Istituto Veneto and the Istituto Lombardo. He is a former President of the Ecological Society of America and the Society for Mathematical Biology. He has received numerous awards, such as the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences, the Margalef Prize for Ecology, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and a U.S. National Medal of Science.