Archive of past EVENTS

Gurdev Singh Khush of the International Rice Research Institute
"Biotechnology & the Green Revolution"

April 10, 2003
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
273 Chafee Hall, URI Kingston (click here for directions)

Download Press Release (PDF format)

Dr. Khush and his team at the IRRI have introduced over 300 new grain varieties which triggered the Green Revolution in Asia in the 1960's. During the first 25 years of Dr. Khush's program, world rice production doubled, enabling an additional 700 million people to obtain adequate nutrition. He then went on to introduce IR36, the miracle rice which is one of the world's most widely grown food crop varieties. His pioneering research has won him many awards, the most notable being the World Food Prize in 1996, which he won for his contribution to advancing human development by improving the quality, quantity, and availability of the world's food supply. The prize, widely regarded as the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for agriculture, is awarded by the World Food Prize Foundation based in Des Moines. Khush is now working on new grain varieties designed to increase yields by another 25 percent.

For more information on the International Rice Research Institute, Gurdev Khush's work, and the role of rice in feeding the world's population, please visit the following sites:

International Rice Research Institute: "Green Revolution Hero Bow Out"
Riceworld: the Virtual Museum: "Meet Dr. Khush"
"The Future of Rice"

Sites on Costs and Benefits of bio-technology, genetically modified foods, etc:
" Playing God in the Shadows"
" Helping to Feed almost half the planet"

Bibliography of articles on genetics and foods (many by Gurdev Khush)

Gramene literature search on rice genome and Gurdev Khush

Paul Gobster
"Urban Parks: Restoring Nature with Culture in Mind"

April 24, 2003
7:00 PM, White Auditorium, URI Kingston (click here for directions)

Topic: “Urban Parks: Restoring Nature with Culture in Mind,” a presentation that looks at four different natural area restorations in Chicago’s Lincoln Park and how the combined historical, design, ecological, and cultural issues work together to help determine restoration options.

Paul Gobster is co-director of the Station's integrated research program on Midwestern landscape change and co-leads a research team under the National Fire Plan looking at people's responses to fuel treatments to reduce wildland fire and restore the health to fire dependent ecosystems. Gobster holds degrees in regional planning, landscape architecture, and environmental studies from the University of Wisconsin, and before joining the Forest Service in 1987 worked as a natural resource planner and an assistant professor of landscape architecture. His personal research interests focus on people's perceptions of natural areas restoration and management, landscape aesthetics, and access and equity issues in urban parks. Gobster edited "Restoring Nature: Perspectives from the Social Sciences and Humanities," which won the American Society of Landscape Architects Merit Award in 2000. Contributors to the book include Cheryl Foster of URI's Department of Philosophy. He was at the center of the Chicago wilderness controversy involving the clash of sustainability and sentimental attachment to an introduced species.

 

2001 Honors Colloquium (PDF format)

 

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