SETAC Europe 35th Annual Meeting

One of the founders of the global sustainability movement, John Elkington has co-founded four businesses since 1978: Environmental Data Services (ENDS, 1978-), CounterCurrent (1983-), SustainAbility (1987-), and Volans Ventures (2008-). Along the way, he has served on more than 80 boards and advisory boards. He has addressed over 1,500 conferences around the world and was a faculty member of the World Economic Forum from 2002–2008. He is the author or co-author of 21 books, the latest is “Tickling Sharks: How We Sold Business on Sustainability,” to be published in June 2024 by Fast Company Press.  

He is an authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development and has been a visiting professor at Cranfield University School of Management, Imperial College and University College London. 

Marco Baity-Jesi is a theoretical physicist specialized in machine learning and complex systems, with applications in environmental sciences and toxicology. At Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, he leads the Machine Learning & Complex Systems Research Group, where he develops computational methods to analyze ecological and water quality challenges, including the prediction of chemical toxicity and pollutant behavior.

His academic background is rooted in the study of high-dimensional systems. He earned his Ph.D. in physics from Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Sapienza University of Rome, where he worked under the supervision of Víctor Martín-Mayor and Nobel laureate Giorgio Parisi, focusing on criticality and energy landscapes in complex systems. His postdoctoral research at CEA Saclay and École Normale Supérieure in Paris expanded into the study of deep neural networks, before he moved to Columbia University in the City of New York to explore the dynamics of deep learning and interacting systems with a large number of degrees of freedom.

Since joining Eawag in 2019, Baity-Jesi has been integrating machine learning techniques with environmental research to improve data-driven assessments of chemical and ecological risks. His research contributes to a broader understanding of predictive modeling in environmental science, bridging theoretical approaches with practical applications in toxicology and water research.

Yaz Ellis is an award-winning wildlife filmmaker and camerawoman specializing in Austrian wildlife stories. Originally from the UK, she moved to Vienna when she fell in love with filming the European Hamsters that live wild in the city. Her films reveal fascinating secrets of Viennese and Austrian wildlife and have won multiple awards, including Jackson Wild (considered the Oscars of natural history filmmaking), United Nations’ World Wildlife Day and National Geographic’s Wild Pitch. She focuses on how wildlife is adapting to and challenged by human impacts, which is reflected best in her film “Beavers About Town,” following a family of beavers as they navigate life in urban Vienna.  

In 2024, Yaz completed her work as the director of photography on Terra Mater Studio’s wildlife documentary “Wild Vienna.” She filmed unique animal behaviour sequences in Vienna for over two years, revealing how biodiverse the city is – a home to wild hamsters, ground squirrels, long-eared owls and beavers. Yaz was recently awarded the My World Film Grant and is now directing a film about Austria’s life-saving rescues of deer fawn. She is also currently working as the director of photography on a new urban wildlife documentary for ORF Universum.