Special Science Seminar

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Monday, March 4th, 2019
2:00 PM to 4:00 PM

World-renowned Systems Design Engineer Dr. Keith Hipel will present his award-winning Royal Society of Canada (RSC) Miroslaw Romanowski Lecture – Negotiations over Groundwater Contamination on Monday, March 4 at 2 pm at a special science seminar at Vancouver Island University (VIU).

Hipel was awarded the Miroslaw Ronanowski Medal, Canada’s highest recognition for environmental research, for significant contributions to the resolution of scientific aspects of environmental problems or for important improvements to the quality of an ecosystem in all aspects – terrestrial, atmospheric and aqueous – brought about by scientific means.

Hipel is a University Professor of Systems Design Engineering at Waterloo University. His research takes a multidisciplinary engineering approach that is applied to society’s most complex problems such as climate change, water resource management, global energy requirements and sustainable development. In 2017, VIU awarded Hipel an Honorary Doctorate of Science.

“Systems design engineering is about creative problem solving,” says Hipel. “Engineering principles are employed to look at the complex problems in a sensible way to design sound solutions that reflect ‘stakeholders’ value systems.”

His lecture explores the application of the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution (GMCR), which was applied to the explosive dispute that arose 30 years ago over the discovery of a carcinogen in the aquifer supplying water to the town of Elmira, located in Southern Ontario, Canada, to demonstrate how one can realistically investigate conflict to obtain strategic insights for supporting informed decision making.