Climate, Carbon and Computer Science
Climate, Carbon and Computer Science
Abstract

The climate crisis is perhaps one of the most significant crises to face humanity. There is an urgent need to address this by decarbonizing every aspect of industrial society. In this talk, I will first examine the sources of anthropogenic carbon. Drawing on examples from my research, I will then discuss how tools and techniques  from computer science can be used to reduce the carbon footprint of building heating and cooling, residential  electricity use, and transportation. I will end with some ideas on using blockchain technology for trustworthy carbon offsets.

 

Speaker: Professor Srinivasan Keshav
Date: 29 September 2021 (Wed)
Time: 4:00pm - 5:00pm
Poster: Click here

 

Biography

Srinivasan Keshav is the Robert Sansom Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge. His interests lie broadly at the intersection of computer science and sustainability. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1991. He was subsequently a Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Labs and an Associate Professor at Cornell. In 1999 he left academia to co-found Ensim Corporation and GreenBorder Technologies Inc. Returning to academia, he was at the University of Waterloo in Canada from 2003 to 2019, holding a Canada Research Chair and later the Cisco Chair in Smart Grid. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, ACM, and IEEE, and a Distinguished Alumnus of IIT Delhi. He is the author of two graduate textbooks on computer networking and has served as Chair of ACM's Special Interest Group on Communications.