Public invited to attend final Climate Quest showcase

January 27, 2015

by Sarah Olson From mindfulness to mealworms, five teams of researchers seek to address growing concerns in the face of global climate change including industry efficiency, food security and wasteful human behavior.

As finalists in the Climate Quest competition, the teams will present their climate change solutions to a team of thought leaders and entrepreneurs at the Climate Quest Finale on Friday, January 30 at the UW–Madison Fluno Center. Attendance is free and open to the public with pre-registration. Each team will give a 30-minute presentation followed by questions from the review panel. The presentation schedule is:

9:30 a.m. EcoMotion
10:30 a.m. Mindful Climate Action
11:30 a.m. The Dionysus Project
2:15 p.m. MIGHTi
3:15 p.m. Global Dairy Production

EcoMotion EcoMotion is a mobile app game that encourages people to combat climate change by motivating them to make lifestyle choices that will reduce their individual carbon footprint. Mindful Climate Action Mindful Climate Action is a training program that combines mindfulness-based stress reduction with education about climate change, energy use and carbon footprints to stimulate people to adopt more sustainable lifestyle habits. Dionysus Project The Dionysus Project seeks to re-create the beef industry with a closed-loop, carbon neutral and energy efficient operation model centered on a “human-scale” slaughterhouse to reduce the impact of industrial meat production. MIGHTi MIGHTi is an operation exploring the production of edible insects to cultivate an inexpensive and low-impact nutrient source that will be sustainable in a changing climate and also mitigate food insecurity in developing areas. Global Dairy Production This project involves an online and mobile application that would help dairy farmers optimize milk production by tailoring management practices to account for differences among cow breeds under current and predicted environmental conditions. The review panel will evaluate each project based on solution clarity, feasibility, time to implementation, scalability and expected scope of impact. The winner will be announced on Tuesday, February 3.