“This is an extremely exciting topic and I hope I can pass it on to you” said professor Carla Gomes at the beginning of her speech in another session of IST Distinguished Lecture Series, held this Friday, June 9. The professor of Computer Science, who is also the director of the Institute for Computational Sustainability at Cornell University, focused her speech on computational sustainability.

The researcher talked about the projects and results of CompSustNet, a national and international large-scale research network for which she is responsible. “Sustainability is not only related to the environment. We can use the computational developments to create impact on society, thus solving many problems of sustainability”, highlighted professor Carla Gomes.

The way in which algorithms can improve wildlife preservation and biodiversity conservation, poverty mitigation and the discovery of new renewable materials, were some of the topics approached by the speaker. “We urgently need to better manage our natural resources, to find new sustainable materials”, warned the researcher, unveiling new solutions to these problems.