There had to be a silver lining to the nearly universal lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the small benefits has been a temporarily lighter human footprint in many ecosystems.
For six months, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has superseded all other public policy priorities. Governments placed their economies in a state of suspended animation, buttressed their health care systems, and pushed trillions out the door to help citizens weather the storm. But other policy problems are not going away. Indeed, COVID-19 has exposed and deepened many cracks in the system. As countries reopen, governments and multilateral institutions are grappling with what comes next, and how to reverse what the IMF estimates will be a five per cent contraction of the global economy in 2020.
As parents worry about the school lessons kids have missed because of the pandemic, there’s one dinner conversation about COVID-19 that can make-up for any lost science lessons. Talk about all the uncertainty and doubt, from changing rules about wearing masks to efforts to create a vaccine. Explain that what we’re living through is science in action.
President and CEO, Rideau Hall Foundation
Advisory Council Member, ISSP, uOttawa
By its very nature, innovation can be noisy. It demands change, flexibility and innovators to loudly champion how they’ve shaped the future for the better. That noisiness is not always in line with perceptions of “Canadian politeness”. Post-COVID-19 Canada will require more noise about innovation; not only to get us through the immediacy of the global pandemic, but to inspire innovative solutions to address longer-term critical global challenges.
On Thursday, April 29, at 12:00 PM, the Institute for Science, Society and Policy will host Prof. Mariam Humayun, Faculty Affiliate, ISSP and Assistant Professor, Marketing, Telfer School of Management, uOttawa, to discuss the emergence and resilience of Bitcoin.
On Tuesday, May 11, from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM, the ISSP and the RCIS will host an expert panel discussion on AI and machine learning.
Will AI and machine learning augment or replace human creativity? How do we teach creativity to the next generation in a world of AI and machine learning? And how do we ensure teaching creativity and innovation in this world remains inclusive?
On Thursday, May 27, at 12:00 PM, the Institute for Science, Society and Policy will host Prof. Handan Tezel, Faculty Affiliate, ISSP and Full Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Enginnering, Faculty of Enginnering, uOttawa, to discuss how we can capture carbon dioxide from combustion gases or from air and recycle it back to make fuels and other useful chemicals, instead of releasing it into the atmosphere.
The ISSP was delighted to host Stephen Blank, Senior Fellow at the ISSP, for a public lecture on the history and future of decision-making.
We live today in a moment of remarkable historic transition – the end of “The 70 Good Years” and the emergence of a new global order. We leave a world largely characterized by linear change in many critical dimensions, and enter a new world in which discontinuous change is the rule. We leave a world in which change has been generally clear, one step proceeding upon another. We enter a world in which future scenarios diverge widely. The key drivers of this powerful transformation are technology, climate change and demographics.
The Institute for Science, Society and Policy and the Royal Canadian Institute for Science were delighted to host the first panel of the second year of the ISSP-RCIScience Lecture Series. The series focusses on the impact of emerging science and technology on society. On March 5, we discussed the science, policy and societal implications of climate change.
ISSP Core members Kelly Bronson, Sandra Schillo and Senior Fellow Jeff Kinder and the Institute on Governance (IOG) hosted a seminar on inclusive innovation.
This seminar attempted to build clarity around “inclusive innovation” from the ground-up: by reflecting on what people in positions of decision-making power, both in government and industry, are doing to further the inclusive innovation agenda. This workshop specifically focused on what we might consider the first two levels of inclusive innovation—1) The "who," or, who are the people participating in innovation processes? 2) The “what,” or what types of innovation activities are considered?
The ISSP and the Centre de recherche en civilisation canadienne-française were delighted to invite you to the Talk with Jean-Louis Trudel titled Les marées à venir : le cas de Québec.
This activity was offered as part of FRA 3545, "Contemporary Literature of French Ontario". Free activity, open to all students on Thursday, February 28, 2019 from 4 PM to 5:30 PM, at the University of Ottawa Morisset Hall, CRCCF 65 University Street, Room 040.
The Human Rights Research and Education Centre, the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, the ISSP, and Scholars at Risk (SAR) uOttawa were delighted to present SCIENCE, A Human Right.
Congratulations to Sandra Schillo, Core Member of the ISSP and Associate Professor at The Telfer School of Management, uOttawa for being selected as a speaker on the upcoming TEDxKanata.
Congratulations to Jackie Dawson, Core Member and Canada Research Chair in Environment, Society and Policy at the ISSP uOttawa, recipient of the 2020 SSHRC Impact Connection Award for her climate change research.
How has COVID-19 affected Canadians' attitudes towards climate action? The sense of urgency appears to be trending up. Nik Nanos returns to the podcast to discuss results from the latest Positive Energy/Nanos quarterly tracking survey, including the appetite for climate ambition and levels of public trust in different information sources.
Op-ed written by Monica Gattinger, Director, ISSP and Chair, Positive Energy, and Nik Nanos, CEO, Nanos Research, discussing the new Positive Energy survey results Climate ambition steady: Urgency to act now trending up, for Maclean's.
