This conference seeks to confront the academic community of the Fuenlabrada School of Engineering (and other people who want to join our reflection) with a critical and conscious perspective with a solid scientific basis on one of the greatest challenges facing humanity today: the current environmental unsustainability of human activity on planet Earth. As a School of technical education, including various engineering, architecture and landscaping, we understand that a clear awareness of how human activity impacts the environment and what changes are essential to make a future viable for humanity and the planet is part of our necessary skills. If that future is everyone's business, we seek to reflect and learn about what our part of the task is in this immense project of eco-social transformation that, whether we believe it or not, is unavoidable.

The cycle "Science and technology for an eco-social transformation", which begins with this conference, aims to be a permanent, low-intensity proposal, in which we meet as an academic community of the EIF with outstanding people in different areas of knowledge who can help us become aware of the great challenges of our time, of all their implications, and of our share of responsibility as researchers, as citizens, and as present and future professionals in technical disciplines such as telecommunications engineering, aerospace engineering, biomedical engineering, robotics engineering, data science and engineering, architecture and urban planning, landscaping, and many other branches of knowledge of as many people close to us as want to accompany us on this path of knowledge and activation of critical awareness.

Bio

Professor Fernando Valladares holds a PhD in Biological Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid, with extraordinary bachelor's and doctoral awards and the international Mason H. Hale Award (Canada, 1994). Currently a research professor at the CSIC, where he heads the Ecology and Global Change group at the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN-CSIC), he is also an associate professor at the Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid. His research has focused on the impacts of global change on terrestrial ecosystems and on the mechanisms of tolerance and survival to extreme environmental conditions, with the abundance and impact of his scientific production being very notable (according to Google Scholar, more than 47000 citations and an H index of 102). 

However, he also stands out for being a benchmark for the dissemination of science in Spain, a leading scientist who knows how to transfer knowledge to society in a field as transcendental as environmental sustainability. For two decades, Valladares has dedicated a great effort to transmitting to the whole society the scientific evidence on the climate crisis and the loss of biodiversity on our planet. In addition to frequently collaborating with the main media to comment on the latest news on the climate crisis, the loss of biodiversity and other aspects of environmental news, he carries out an intense daily dissemination activity through his own channels on social networks and through the 'Critical Science' section of eldiario.es, in addition to publishing analytical articles on environmental issues in media such as The Conversation-Spain. He has been concerned with the connection between economic, ecological and social issues, and with promoting critical awareness with a scientific perspective in society so that we can address such transcendental questions as: What kind of world do we want? Where do we want to go?