About September's speakers:

Kerry Emanuel is the Cecil & Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.

He has specialized in atmospheric convection and the mechanisms acting to intensify hurricanes. He works on various aspects of moist convection in the atmosphere, and on tropical cyclones. He is interested in fundamental properties of moist convection, including the scaling of convective velocities and the nature of the diurnal cycle of convection over land. His group has developed a promising technique for inferring tropical cyclone activity from coarse-grain output of climate models or re-analyses.

Georgie Friedman is an interdisciplinary artist whose projects include large-scale video installations, single and multi-channel videos and several photographic series. She investigates a wide range of phenomena including mild to severe atmospheric and oceanic conditions, along with deconstructing perceived geographic boundaries. She utilizes photography, video, sound, installation, engineering and the physics of light, in order to create new experiences for viewers.

Free and open to the public.

Catalyst Conversations presents provocative talks by visual artists whose work resonates with science and technology, sparking conversations, synergy and future projects with these communities and beyond.

There exists a dual perception of storms as they are both beautiful and terrible at the same time and evoke in us a sense of the sublime. Georgie Friedman and Kerry Emanuel navigate this territory and will share their respective concerns and ideas about how storms affect us culturally, historically, and conversely, the effects of human behavior on them.  Their interests as both artist and scientist respectively lead them to similar concerns - the power of nature and the fragility of life on the planet, and many questions, among them: can art elevate our awareness and can science demystify phenomena as we seek to better understand what we do not understand. 

all images, video and other content © georgie friedman