Leveraging AI to Combat the Climate Crisis - Jacobson Series

AI is changing the face of how we work, learn and create. But can it change the future of our planet? According to a 2022 BCG Climate AI Survey report (shown below), 87% of private and public sector CEOs with decision-making power in AI and climate believe AI is an essential tool in the fight against climate change.

Our upcoming panel discussion, part of the Jacobson Family Sustainable Impact Lecture Series, will look at the intersection of climate change and machine learning, through a business lens. How can businesses use emerging tools and smart technology to address, mitigate and better understand issues related to sustainability and climate health in California and around the world? What are some specific ways that AI can be leveraged to accelerate this progress?

The Jacobson Family Sustainable Impact Lecture Series is focused on sharing business-specific strategies and tools to help solve the world’s most wicked problems. Our panel of experts bring their diverse breadth of knowledge to our audience of USC undergraduate and graduate students in a variety of majors; local community stakeholders and business professionals.

Dinner boxes will be provided. Seating is limited, so come early to grab your spot! Doors will open 10 minutes prior to the start time. Please be on time, there will be no entry allowed after 5:20pm.

Join us on October 18th at 5pm to hear from social impact leaders:

Keith Gipson, CEO/CTO of Facil.AI

Sabrina Williams, CEO of SEED

Moderated by Kelly Sanders, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering & Director of the M.S. in Green Technologies program.

If you can't make it in person, join us via zoom!

Zoom Webinar Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/99433770590?pwd=WmdTRWhXcE1USE82K1lBMm5qZEhxdz09

About Our Panel:

Sabrina Williams is CEO of SEED, a Certified B-Corp, where she draws on her background in architecture, law and urban planning—along with over 25 years of experience in 40 states as a community organizer advancing social justice. In 2000, Sabrina founded a nonprofit to address sustainability and food security in low-income neighborhoods and challenged ordinances and public housing policies that restricted gardening and urban farming. She built an IoT enabled automatic irrigation system for farmers in South Los Angeles and Cuba, before founding SEED in 2019 to develop--and democratize access to--climate-smart agtech. She is a Master Gardener whose superpowers are perfect pie crusts, vocal harmonies, and soil carbon cycling.

Keith has been a pioneer in the Buildings IoT industry and technology for over twenty-five years. In 1997 Keith Co-Founded the first EEM company, Silicon Energy Corp., which was sold to Itron in 2001 for $71 M. In 2005 Keith co-founded Shield Ops Inc. He architected an AI driven CSI and evidence linking program to help law enforcement discover, classify and correlate crime data as featured on the television show CSI Las Vegas (Season 10, Episode 4 "Coup De Grace").

Most recently Keith is the Founder and CEO of facil.ai Corp. (2004) utilizing AI and machine learning to provide building energy efficiency solutions to commercial, retail and university customers. Keith holds a United States patent (US 6,178,362 Enterprise Energy Management System and Method 2001) and was honored by Southern California Edison as “A Modern Day African-American Inventor” for his contributions to technology in general and specifically the electric utility industry. He resides in Los Angeles, CA with his wife Andrea, and family.

Dr. Kelly Twomey Sanders is an Associate Professor in the University of Southern California’s Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research aims to reduce the environmental impacts of providing energy and water, analyze tensions between climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, and analyze the effects of climate change on energy systems. She has authored more than two dozen publications and has given dozens of invited talks on topics at the intersection of engineering, science, and policy. Sanders has been recognized in Forbes’ 30 under 30: Today’s disruptors and tomorrow’s brightest stars and MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 for her contributions to the energy field. In 2019, she was granted an NSF Early CAREER award. Her research and commentary have been featured in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, WIRED magazine, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and Scientific American. Sanders received her B.S. in Bioengineering from the Pennsylvania State University, as well M.S.E and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Environmental Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, respectively. She teaches classes related to energy and the environment.