Mark Lynas

Mark Lynas
Mark Lynas

MARK LYNAS October 10, 2016 - 3:30 p.m. CST
Nebraska Innovation Campus Conference Center, 2021 Transformation Drive, Lincoln

GMOs and Biotechnology | “GMOs are Green: How an Environmentalist Changed his Mind About Biotechnology”

Mark is the author of three previous books. High Tide: News from a Warming World was published in 2004, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet in 2007. The God Species was published in 2011. Six Degrees was made into an hour-long documentary by NatGeo and broadcast worldwide in 2008, with voiceover by Alec Baldwin.

As a pro-science campaigner and commentator he is a frequent speaker worldwide, particularly in the US and Canada. He is on the board of the UK campaign group Sense About Science, and (though still resident in Oxford, UK) is currently visiting fellow at the Cornell Alliance for Science, based at Cornell University and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He has written extensively in world media on the GMO issue as well as climate change and science in society.

In November 2009 Mark was appointed adviser on climate change to the President of the Maldives, Mohammed Nasheed, and was involved in the Maldives’ effort to be the first carbon neutral country on Earth by 2020, and its role in the international climate change process, until Nasheed was deposed in a military coup on 7 February 2012. His book Nuclear 2.0 was published as a Kindle Single in July 2013, topping the non-fiction sales chart for Kindle Singles in the UK.

He is a frequent speaker around the world on climate change, biotechnology and nuclear power. He has been a Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University’s School of Geography and the Environment, and is currently a member of the advisory board of the science advocacy group Sense About Science, and campaigns on behalf of various pro-science causes.

In October 2013 he was appointed a Visiting Fellow at Cornell University’s Office of International Programs at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The responsibilities for this role include teaching on relevant Cornell courses, and advising on Cornell’s vital work on public sector biotechnology in developing countries to support environmental and food security improvements.

Mark lives in Oxford with his wife Maria and two children, Tom and Rosa. He enjoys mountaineering, horse-riding, hiking solo across Norwegian ice-caps, and Ultimate Frisbee.