Half-day convening exploring opportunities to leverage university-originated research to scale up commercialization of adaptation and resilience (A&R) technologies.

University-generated IP is an underutilized pipeline of resilience solutions to help businesses and communities navigate the disruptions, health risks, and costs of rising temperatures, surging seas, increased water stress, stronger storms, and more intense wildfires.

​There is an urgent need to harness research breakthroughs and bring early-stage innovators into the A&R ecosystem to scale solutions to these growing challenges. This event will bring together university researchers, technology transfer professionals, early-stage investors, corporate buyers, and ecosystem builders to explore success stories, surface ongoing friction points, and identify opportunities to support the lab-to-market pathway better. Aligning these groups is critical to transforming research into impactful tech that builds adaptation and resilience capabilities.

​The event will include:

• ​Keynote Remarks: Victoria Salinas, Climate Leader in Residence, Duke University and former Deputy Administrator for Resilience, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
• ​The Road from Initial Research to Commercial Traction for Passive Daytime Radiative Cooling Panel
• ​Investor Perspectives on Early-stage A&R Ventures Panel
• ​Ecosystem Enablers From Lab to Market Panel
• ​Resilience Game Changers report launch: Tailwind Futures with share highlights from the forthcoming report, supported by the Quadrature Foundation, exploring A&R-relevant technologies originating in university labs, such as passive daytime radiative cooling, metal-organic frameworks, 4D printing, genomics and gene editing and solvent-based desalination.

Hosted by Activate, Foley Hoag, Hazelwood Network, The New York Climate Exchange and Tailwind Futures.

Participants will:

• Learn how offshore wind contributes to climate mitigation.
• Understand how offshore wind supports energy security and grid resilience.
• Explore economic benefits including jobs and workforce development.
• Learn about community benefits and local investment.
• Understand how offshore wind fits into broader sustainability goals.
• Experience Windscape Brooklyn’s interactive exhibits.
• Participate in discussion about balancing societal needs with environmental stewardship.

Hosted by Duke University and Equinor’s Empire Wind and Windscape Brooklyn.

Participants will:

• Understand ecological interactions between offshore infrastructure and marine ecosystems.
• Learn about current scientific evidence regarding biodiversity around offshore wind.
• Explore both opportunities and risks.
• Understand monitoring and adaptive management.
• Discuss how offshore wind can be developed responsibly.
• Learn how partnerships among academia, conservation organizations, government, and industry support better outcomes.

Hosted by Duke University and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Cities 2040 Panel

What does a “fit-for-purpose” city look like in a world of chronic heat, flood risk, water stress and grid constraint? How can cities balance affordability, resilience and decarbonization at the same time? And what emerging solutions—across nature-based infrastructure, digital twins, distributed energy and water systems, and circular urban resource flows—could redefine urban performance over the next decade?

Moderator: Catherine Howe, Executive Vice President, Investment Reports

Speakers include:

Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer, Vermont

Melissa Hoffer, Climate Chief, Massachusetts

Victoria Salinas, Climate Leader in Residence, Duke University and Former Deputy Administrator for Resilience, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

​A conversation with leaders from some of the South’s leading innovation and accelerator organizations exploring how regional ecosystems are helping entrepreneurs commercialize technologies, secure customers and capital, and scale the next generation of clean-tech companies.

Jeremy Fritzhand — Embarc Collective
Judy Ledlee, PhD — Duke Climate Design Program, Duke University
​Bill Nussey — Engage, Moderator
Hannah Turner — Cox Cleantech Accelerator
Ryan Rutledge — Joules Accelerator

A consortium of U.S. universities will highlight the ways in which they are partnering with their communities to build resilience to the effects of extreme weather.  A showcase of case studies from multiple universities will provide examples of partnerships that are mitigating the effects of extreme heat and flooding on our communities. Programs highlight community-university partnerships in which universities serve as resilience hubs, conduct research to develop solutions, and educate and train future problem-solvers.

The session will examine what it takes to build from a fragmented resilience finance landscape toward coordinated action by grounding projects in community priorities, accounting for systemic and future risk, making resilience value visible, establishing authority, aligning partners, and matching each source of capital to the role it can play best.

Across the United States, communities are trying to reduce risk, modernize infrastructure, and prepare for worsening floods, heat, wildfire, storms, drought, and other climate pressures. Even when funding, technical solutions, and public support exist, projects can remain unnecessarily difficult to deliver. State laws, regulations, institutions, and funding systems shape what local governments can do, how quickly they can act, and whether projects move forward at all.

This session marks the transition from initial research to implementation. We’ll present an early set of state policy and regulatory reforms designed to remove unnecessary barriers to resilience investments and then engage participants in evaluating their feasibility, impact, and completeness. The discussion will also focus on building a shared strategy for disseminating and advancing these reforms.

This event will convene experts at New York Climate Week to assess how corporations and financial institutions can better measure and disclose their ocean-related environmental impacts to drive more effective, science-based decision-making.

Led by UNGC, with Duke University as a co-convener with CDP, TNFD, WWF and SBTN.

Join the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) to hear how resilience is shaping infrastructure today and in the future.

Panel – Leading Together: Building Community for Proven Results

• Mayor Janet Cowell, City of Raleigh, NC
• Pat Cummens, Director of Government Strategy, ESRI
• Elizabeth Losos, PhD, Executive in Residence, Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability
• Jonathan Moch, PhD, Senior Advisor for Climate and Energy Policy, North Carolina Governor’s Office