Frontiers Forum
This year our Frontiers Forum was once again a virtual series of webinars around science-led solutions to the grand challenges of our time, viewed more than 6 million times.
2021
speakers
Al Gore
The case for climate optimism
Former US Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore outlined encouraging progress on the sustainability revolution – from market shifts towards clean energy, to new science-based emissions targets, to incredible advances in science and technology.
Esther Duflo
Good economics for harder times
Nobel prize winner and best-selling author Prof Esther Duflo discussed her revolutionary, evidence-based approach to economics and the lessons it provides to challenges such as poverty alleviation, Covid-19, and climate change.
Harris Lewin
Genomics-led solutions for all life on Earth
Prof Harris Lewin showed how the moonshot Earth BioGenome Project he co-founded – which aims to sequence the genomes of 1.8 million species – will help efforts to slow extinction rates and mitigate climate change impacts, plus add billions to the bioeconomy.
Kongjian Yu
Healing the world’s cities
Globally renowned ‘landscape architect’ Prof Kongjian Yu revealed how replacing concrete infrastructure with nature-based solutions is transforming city centers into beautiful spaces for people and biodiversity, while also cleansing water and better managing floods.
Axel Cleeremans
Solving consciousness
Renowned consciousness researcher Prof Axel Cleeremans took us on a journey through the leading theories attempting to explain how we know who we are, and introduced a new ‘adversarial’ research approach that may finally solve this great mystery of our minds.
David Christian
Preparing our children as guardians of the planet
Prof David Christian argued for an education revolution through teaching Big History – a wide-angle approach to history covering 4.5 billion years and multiple disciplines that illuminates the complex connections between people and the Earth’s natural processes.