We are thrilled to announce Dr. Sylvia Hood Washington as a keynote speaker at the 2023 Midwest Climate Summit, taking place from February 21-23, 2023, at Washington University’s Knight Center, in St. Louis, Missouri.
Dr. Washington is a highly accomplished and successful environmental epidemiologist, environmental engineer, and environmental historian with over 40 years of research and field experience working on the impact of fossil fuel-generated pollution on human health and ecosystems using qualitative and quantitative analyses. Her professional career includes serving as a lecturer developing and teaching courses in Epidemiology, BIG Data, and Health Disparities at North Carolina State University’s inaugural Data Science Academy. Her experience in successfully implementing Research Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Superfund, and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations for effluents and solid waste derived from power generation sources (space and terrestrial systems) for both industry and NASA have provided her with the unique knowledge base for developing the BIG Data Courses at the Academy. She is also a former NSF Principal Investigator for the grant, “Engineering, Infrastructure, and Environmental Health Disparities,” that studied an interdisciplinary approach of data science, GIS, environmental history and epidemiology to examine environmental justice tied to water systems in the Great Lakes region. Dr. Washington resides in the western suburbs of Chicago and takes great pride in being a Midwesterner.
Dr. Washington’s keynote presentation will include her research in environmental history and show how the emergence and current prevalence of health disparities in marginalized communities, along with their relationship to environmental pollution, are a result of climate change stemming from technology, industrialization, engineering design, and urbanization. She will draw upon her expertise as well as her personal experiences to encapsulate the challenges unique to the Midwest caused by the change in climate.
We look forward to having Dr. Washington speak at the 2023 Midwest Climate Summit! For more information about the Summit, and to register for either in-person or virtual participation, please visit: https://midwestclimatecollaborative.wustl.edu/summit/