On Monday, March 9, the Commonwealth Honors College and Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society sponsored the annual Daffodil Lecture on Sustainability and the Environment at the University of Massachusetts.
This year’s lecture, titled “AI and Entrepreneurship in Climate and Sustainability,” was delivered by Dr. Auroop R. Ganguly, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern University.
UMass has long positioned itself as a leader in sustainability within research initiatives and campus-wide energy efficiency efforts. In 2015, The Princeton Review ranked the university among the nation’s top 50 most environmentally responsible colleges.
“I knew of Dr. Ganguly’s work through colleagues at Northeastern,” Mari Castañeda, dean of the Honors College, said. “He takes an approach that is really about how we make positive, productive things in the world and encouraging students to think about what their part is going to be.”
Castañeda said the lecture was designed to encourage students to think critically about how technological innovation can be used to address real-world problems.
She added that Ganguly’s message challenged students to consider how entrepreneurship and technological development could support communities rather than simply generate profit.
“How can I do good work without necessarily falling into simply capitalist structures?” Castañeda said. “What are the possibilities of actually making positive, productive change that supports communities and allows people to do the work they want to do?”
Ganguly’s talk explored how artificial intelligence, interdisciplinary research and entrepreneurial thinking can help address climate change. He emphasized the power of the next generation of scientists and innovators, and how they may play a critical role in shaping solutions.
Ganguly addressed the climate narrative as a problem that does not have to come at the expense of economic opportunity. Instead, he argued that climate innovation is becoming one of the most important areas for both scientific discovery and entrepreneurship.
At the center of this challenge, he explained, is the complexity of the climate system itself. Climate change is not an isolated environmental issue, as it intersects economics, infrastructure, politics and global development. While discussing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Ganguly emphasized that climate action influences other global priorities.
“The central driver is climate action,” Ganguly said. “That drives all of these other sustainable development goals.”
Ganguly illustrated the long and often difficult path from scientific discovery to global policy by recounting the history of ozone depletion research. A landmark study published in Nature in 1974 led to the Montreal Protocol in 1987, an international agreement to phase out ozone-damaging chemicals. The treaty gained bipartisan political support, including from former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
“Fourteen years after that paper, collective action, global action,” Ganguly said. “Seven years after that, there was the Nobel Prize that was awarded.”
Climate change, however, presents an even greater challenge. Unlike localized pollution problems, greenhouse gases quickly disperse throughout the atmosphere.
This interconnectedness means that environmental changes in one region can influence weather, ecosystems and economies around the world. For example, natural climate cycles like the El Niño-Southern Oscillation originate in the Pacific Ocean but affect rainfall patterns and drought conditions across multiple continents.
Ganguly also highlighted how climate pressures can cascade through human systems. During a 2012 heat wave in India, delayed monsoon rains prompted farmers to pump groundwater for irrigation. The resulting surge in electricity demand overwhelmed the power grid, triggering one of the largest blackouts in history.
“This is how interconnected we are,” he said.
To address climate change, scientists often divide solutions into two broad categories.
“Adaptation is managing the unavoidable,” Ganguly said. “Mitigation is avoiding the unmanageable.”
Much of Ganguly’s own research focuses on adaptation, particularly using artificial intelligence and advanced data analysis to improve predictions of extreme weather events. These tools can help governments and infrastructure managers prepare for floods, heat waves and other climate-related risks.
“Extremes are hard,” he said while discussing rainfall forecasting. “Extremes are the most important when you’re thinking about floods.”
Throughout the lecture, Ganguly emphasized the importance of interdisciplinary thinking. Many academic fields, he noted, were defined centuries ago and do not necessarily reflect the complexity of modern global challenges.
“You will often find people asking, ‘Which field are you?’” he said. “Some disciplinary boundaries that exist today may have been defined centuries ago … but may not be the best today to solve the world’s biggest problems.”
Ganguly added that addressing climate change can also create new industries and economic opportunities, referencing his former doctoral students’ startups focusing on climate risk modeling, infrastructure resilience and weather forecasting technologies.
Students who attended the lecture also reflected on the importance of connecting technical research to real-world careers.
Mikey Hadley, a sophomore computer science and political science major, added that events like the Daffodil Lecture provide valuable opportunities for students to connect directly with experts in their fields.
“I think the best part of stuff like this is you get to network,” he said. “Talking with someone who has a job that you might aspire to get yourself is helpful.”
Ganguly closed the lecture with a broader message to students about choosing meaningful work and using their skills to address global problems.
“Whatever you do,” Ganguly said, “make sure that you make a real difference somewhere.”
Audrey Falkner can be reached at [email protected].
