Conference Organization

Eight themes, or disciplines, will be addressed:

• socioeconomics,
• the water-energy nexus,
• biodiversity,
• biogeochemical cycles,
• food security,
• biomass supply transportation logistics,
• life cycle assessment, and
• energy policy.

Recognizing that a systems approach is essential for development of a sustainable biofuels and bioenergy sector, parallel presentation and discussion sessions will address the eight themes singly and then within cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional contexts.  Each session will feature one or more invited overview presentation and a series of offered technical talks on current research and Pan American case studies; at the end of each session, discussions stimulated by a panel will focus on identification of knowledge gaps and recommended steps to address these gaps. Additional technical presentations will be made in an afternoon poster session. Students, researchers, foundations, government agencies, and private investors/entrepreneurs are invited to submit abstracts for technical presentations, and to prepare poster presentations.

On the final morning, reports of the previous days’ sessions will be used in an integrative session to stimulate discussions on refining critical knowledge gaps and recommendations for future research that were identified in earlier sessions.  There will then be a further opportunity for input and discussion by conference participants in the afternoon by contributing to the preparation of a conference “road map” report that will synthesize conference findings.