UC Riverside’s College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences will present talks on climate change, cosmology, and sustainability as part of its annual Science Lecture Series.

The series will kick off March 5 with a presentation by Robert Allen, a professor of climatology, titled “The Escalating Climate Crisis.”

Allen will discuss the widespread and intensifying warming of the planet with the ten hottest years on record occurring in the last decade. He will address how and why our climate is changing and what needs to be done to avert the climate catastrophe.

The second lecture on April 30 features Barry Barish, a distinguished professor of physics and astronomy and Nobel Laureate. His talk will cover cosmology, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO, gravitational waves, and collapsing black holes.

That same day will include a celebration of Barish being awarded the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest honor for science. Barish received the recognition in October at the White House from President Biden for his groundbreaking research on sub-atomic particles.

The series will conclude May 14 with a presentation from Elia Scudiero, a research agronomist with the Department of Environmental Sciences, on “From Dirt to Data: Precision Insights for Sustainable Agricultural Systems.”

His talk will address the issue of water scarcity and environmental degradation threatening food production. Scudiero will discuss his research to improve irrigation practices to sustain agricultural systems in the future through the use of field measurements, near-ground and remote sensing, and spatiotemporal multi-scale data analysis.

This will be the 15th year of this popular science lecture series, which is free and open to the public and campus community. Over the years, the Science Lecture Series has covered important and timely topics such as food security, sustainability, climate change, the search for life beyond earth, gene editing, and COVID-19.

Allen’s lecture will be held March 5 at 6 p.m. at the UCR Palm Desert Center; Barish’s will be April 30 at 6 p.m. at the University Theatre on campus; and Scudiero’s will be May 14 at 6 p.m. at the UCR Palm Desert Center. Each event will be preceded by a reception at 5 p.m.

More information on the lecture series and how to attend is available here.