Conférence du Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy

Programme

9:30 AM – Welcome coffee

9:45 AM – Presentation of the IdEx – Utah collaboration

• Saranne Comel, Université Côte d’Azur

10:00 AM – Presentation of the EMMA project, in collaboration with the  “Water in the Territories of the Maritime Alps” Partnership Chair

• Isabelle La Jeunesse, Université Côte d’Azur

10:15 AM – Accelerating Sustainability Innovation: From Ideas to Ecosystems

• Fielding Norton, Managing Director, Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy

11:15 AM – Presentation of the Wilkes Center research program and its work on air quality

• John Lin, Scientific Director, Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy

12:15 PM – Presentation of the winning projects from the 2026 Wilkes Center Hackathon

• Tying 2nd Place Award : Slow Your Scroll – Isabella DeBoer, Delia Leonard, Avery Hewitson, Bode Packer, Jaxon Smith
• Tying 2nd Place Award : Sustainable Data Centers – Caleb Black, Micah Black, Ethan Gallup, Turan Mammadli, Pouya Sheikhosseini
• 3rd Place award: VoltVault – Raphaël Meyer, Diya Mandot, Rishabh Saini

12:30 PM – Closing and lunch on the rooftop

Fielding Norton is Managing Director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy at the University of Utah, where he focuses on linking climate science, innovation, entrepreneurship, and societal impact. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and spent more than 25 years in the global insurance and reinsurance industry, where he worked on the application of scientific and analytical models to environmental risk, resilience, and decision-making. More recently, he co-founded a climate-focused insurtech company using AI to better price risk and reward resilience. At the Wilkes Center, he now works on how promising ideas in climate and sustainability can be accelerated through stronger connections among students, researchers, entrepreneurs, and external partners.

In this lecture, Norton will discuss how the Wilkes Climate Innovation Prize and the Wilkes Student Hackathon are being used to encourage problem-solving, entrepreneurship, and interdisciplinary collaboration around climate and sustainability challenges. The talk will also present a broader vision: building an ecosystem of support around these competitions that helps promising teams gain visibility, feedback, connections, and follow-on opportunities that can accelerate development, adoption, and impact.

John Lin is is a Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences and the Scientific Director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy.  He has over 20 years of experience researching the emissions and transport of greenhouse gases and atmospheric pollutants, publishing over 100 peer-reviewed journal papers to date.  He was selected as a Earth Leadership Fellow in 2022 and participates regularly in national and international research efforts such as with the World Meteorological Organization and the European Union.  John’s research group (http://lair.utah.edu/) is carrying out greenhouse gas and air quality observations in the Salt Lake area, as well as in the Uinta Basin.  John also works regularly with satellite observations from NASA to determine carbon emissions from cities around the world.  He has recently served on the Great Salt Lake Strike Team to synthesize scientific knowledge and inform policy decisions surrounding the Great Salt Lake.  John received his AB, AM, and PhD degrees from Harvard University.