MaRS Mornings — Seeds of Change: Scaling ecosystem resilience & resistance

Location: MaRS Live Lounge, 661 University Ave, Toronto, ON

On October 17 join Blaine Pearson, CEO of Seedark and Graham Taylor, Canada CIFAR AI Chair and Professor of Engineering at the UGuelph for a conversation with Kate Allen, climate change reporter at theToronto Star on harnessing tech for nature conservation.

The world is facing the mass extinction of plants, animals and insects, yet we are not fully aware of what we're losing. “We’re burning the books at the library, without even reading them,” says Graham Taylor, Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute. Taylor is harnessing AI to mitigate the crisis of biodiversity loss. His team at the Univeristy of Guelph and collaborators internationally are building an inventory of life on Earth using DNA barcoding, an identification system for potentially every organism in the world.

Climate change has also destroyed the quality of seeds and how they are saved from season to season, exacerbating this seed crisis. Located in Toronto, Seedark is “modernizing the seed supply chain for the purposes of ecological restoration,” says CEO Blaine Pearson. Seedark is hoping to enhance the tracing of seeds around the world to see where they’re most effectively grown to preserve them for later seasons and to make better decisions around biodiversity.

Agenda:

9:00 - 9:15 a.m. — Registration, coffee and networking

9:15 - 9:20 a.m. — Opening remarks

9:20 - 9:55 a.m. — Panel discussion with Seedark's Blaine Pearson and CIFAR/University of Guelph's Graham Taylor moderated by Kate Allen, Toronto Star

9:55 - 10:05 a.m. — Audience Q&A

10:05 - 10:30 a.m. — Networking

Speakers:

, Climate Change Reporter, Toronto Star

, Co-Founder & CEO, Seedark

, Canada Research Chair and Professor of Engineering, University of Guelph

Host or Publisher MaRS Centre