Open forum - 11:00-12:30
UiO Rector Svein Stølen and Fudan President Li JIN will offer welcoming remarks. The forum will be chaired by Vice-Rector for Climate & the Environment and Cross-Disciplinarity Mette Halskov Hansen.
Keynote Speaker
Susan Shirk, Research professor, Chair of the 21st Century China Center, UC San Diego.
Panelists
- Libo WU (Professor, Director of Center for Energy Economics and Strategy Studies, Fudan University): How can China improve its response to climate and energy challenges?
- Vebjørn Bakken (Director of UiO:Energy and Environment): Europe: Strong climate ambitions built on weak supply lines?
- Michael Davidson (Assistant Professor, School of Global Policy and Strategy and Jacobs School of Engineering, UCSD): The advantage of collaboration in global climate action
- Dan Banik (Professor, Director of The Oslo SDG Initiative, UiO): Powering a sustainable future: Meeting climate and energy challenges in the Global South
About the presenters
Susan Shirk
Susan Shirk is research professor and founding chair of the 21st Century China Center. She is one of the most influential experts working on U.S.-China relations and Chinese politics. Her current book is "Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise", which illuminates China's politics and its evolving role on the world's stage since 2008. Her articles have appeared in leading academic publications in the fields of political science, international relations and China studies, and her views on a range of issues relating to modern Chinese politics are highly sought. She is also co-chair of the UC San Diego Forum on U.S.-China Relations, the first ongoing high-level forum focused entirely on the U.S.-China relationship.
Besides her academic work, Shirk is also known for her extensive policy experience, especially in U.S.-China relations. From 1997-2000, Shirk served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs. She is the founder of, and remains active in, the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD), a Track II forum for discussions of security issues among defense and foreign ministry officials and academics from the United States, Japan, China, Russia, and the Koreas.
Libo WU
Libo WU is Professor of School of Economics and School of Big Data at Fudan University, the Dean of the Shanghai Research Institute for Energy and Carbon Neutrality Strategy, the Deputy Dean of Fudan University Big Data Research Institute. Wu’s research revolves around energy environment economics and policy assessment modeling research, big data application statistical analysis, and computational social science research. In 2019, She was the recipient of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars.
In 2016, she was selected as a Young Changjiang Scholar by the Ministry of Education. She has published more than 70 papers in PNAS, Nature Sustainability, Nature Climate Change, Energy Economics, and other domestic and foreign journals. She has presided over and undertaken more than 30 national, provincial and ministerial projects, including major projects of the National Social Science Fund, national "863" projects, key research and development projects of the Ministry of Science and Technology, "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" science and technology support plan projects, and major projects of the Ministry of Education's key bases for humanities and social sciences.
Vebjørn Bakken
Vebjørn Bakken is a theoretical chemist with a Ph.D. on implementing and applying methods for molecular dynamics. He has since 2018 been leading UiO:Energy and Environment, one of three strategic priority areas at the University of Oslo. Prior to that, from 2011-2018, he headed the Centre for Materials Science and Nanotechnology (SMN) at UiO. He has also had several research and teaching positions, and amongst other contributed to establishing a research school in solar cell technology as part of the The Norwegian Research Centre for Solar Cell Technology
Michael Davidson
Michael Davidson is an assistant professor in the School of Global Policy and Strategy and the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He is a faculty member with the 21st Century China Center the Center for Commerce and Diplomacy, and the Japan Forum for Innovation and Technology, all located at UC San Diego. He is currently a fellow with the Public Intellectuals Program at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.
Michael Davidson’s research focuses on the engineering implications and institutional conflicts inherent in deploying renewable energy at scale. He is particularly interested in systems within emerging electricity markets, including China and India, as well as the western U.S.
Prior to joining UC San Diego, Davidson was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center’s Environment and Natural Resources Program. He received his Ph.D. in engineering systems at the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, where he was a researcher with the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and a member of the Tsinghua-MIT China Energy and Climate Project.
Dan Banik
Dan Banik is Professor of Political Science and Director of The Oslo SDG Initiative at the Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo. Banik has written extensively on poverty, politics and development in the Global South, and teaches several courses on development and inclusivity. He has also been appointed extraordinary professor at the University of Pretoria's (UP) Albert Luthuli Leadership Institute (ALLI).
Banik also hosts a weekly podcast, named ‘In Pursuit of Development’. This global programme features conversations with leading scholars, policymakers and activists and offers a deeper understanding of the politics of global development. Each episode discusses the experiences of developing and emerging economies in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Lunch and networking - 12:30-14:00
Attendees will be offered vegetarian refreshments at the venue and may take this time to mingle.
How to participate
Please sign up by following the link below to the form on Nettskjema. Please note down any dietary requirements in the sign-up form. The event is open to all.