Dr. Changwoo Ahn receives $20K NSF grant for INTECOL symposium

Congratulations to Dr. Changwoo Ahn who was awarded an NSF grant of $20K to support the symposium he has organized for the upcoming INTECOL 2017 conference, Beijing, China. For more information about INTECOL and upcoming conferences, please visit:  http://www.intecol.org/

Dr. Changwoo Ahn organized a symposium for the 12th International Congress of Ecology (INTECOL) Conference in Beijing China on August 21-25, 2017, titled “Interdisciplinary Collaboration Among Ecological Engineering, EcoScience, and Eco-Art to Enhance Ecological Restoration Research”. The goals are:

1. To support the participation of U.S. artists and ecosystem scientists in a special symposium that is invitation-only.

2: To develop publication in international journal relating to the theme of the symposium to further share the outcomes of the symposium relevant to ecosystem restoration and ecological engineering.

3. To facilitate cultural and scholarly exchange and dialogue between USA and China on their approaches and experiences of environmental sustainability and resilience design relating to soil, water, and urban landscape across our national and geographic boundaries.

The novel, unprecedented theme of the symposium will provide a great opportunity to share experiences of collaboration between artists and ecosystem scientists with international audience. All of the participants for the symposium are U.S. citizens in the fields of ecosystem ecology, ecological engineering, and eco-art with much of their work based in USA. The symposium will provide the international audience with U.S. experiences on ecological design, ecosystem restoration, urban ecology, and ecological engineering practices both in art and ecosystem science separately and collaboratively. The symposium will also present an incredible opportunity for both the participants and the attendees of the conference with cross-cultural, interdisciplinary connections and thus further collaboration opportunities between them. This type of scholarly and cultural exchanges is rare and will strengthen U.S. scientific research and practices in ecosystem restoration, watershed management, climate change mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity, stormwater management, and ecological engineering practices. The learning outcomes of the symposium will be a transformational nexus of art and ecosystem science to enhance communication and education as the key part of environmental sustainability. INTECOL is the largest ecosystem science focused international conference with an expected number of attendees >3,000. The symposium will facilitate the development of interpersonal dialogue, mutual learning, and scholarship from each other’s disciplines and cultures that can reveal uniquely critical intuitive insights on complex environmental problems and thus enhance our future communication and collaboration on environmental sustainability globally.