SPEAKER'S PROFILES

Vaclav Smil


Vaclav Smil is distinguished professor at the Faculty of Environment of the University of Manitoba, Canada.

He was born in Pilsen, Bohemia, in 1943, followed an interdisciplinary program at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Carolinum University in Prague and obtained a Doctor of natural sciences degree. He obtained his PhD from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State University, US.
Professor Smil is distinguished primarily as a thinker about energy problems and as a prolific and clear-sighted writer on global energy issues. He has 25 books to his credit and has published more than 300 papers. His research interests are interdisciplinary, encompassing the environment, energy, food, population, and economic and public policy. He is particularly interested in the quantification and modelling of global biogeochemical cycles and long-range appraisals of energy and environmental options. Since the early 1970s he has applied these approaches to energy, food, and environmental affairs of China.

He fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, was the first non-American to receive the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology, and has been an invited speaker to over 180 conferences and workshops across the world. He has given invited lectures at many universities around the world, and briefings and testimonies to the White House, US House of Representatives, Office of Technology Assessment of the US Congress, US State Department, and Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs. He has also acted as consultant to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Center for Futures Research, East-West Center, International Research and Development Center, Rockefeller Foundation, US Agency for International Development, US National Academy of Sciences, World Bank, and World Resources Institute.

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Speaker's profiles