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Le centre de recherche SPiN vous invite à son événement inaugural.

L’autisme ne se voit pas toujours. Et pourtant, il est là — dans nos consultations, dans nos familles, dans nos institutions.

On April 27, the Earth and Life Institute is pleased to welcome Dr. Jeff Hamerlinck for a new ELI-Sustainability Talk. 

Abstract

Scenario planning methods have grown in use as rural communities consider the value of 'futures thinking' and extending the timescales for long-range comprehensive planning. 

This talk presents an overview of how scenario planning is being used in Wyoming's Upper Snake River watershed to develop new adaptive capacity in response to climate change and related impacts on water availability. 

Part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the study area centers on Teton County (colloquially known as Jackson Hole), the richest county in the United States and the one with the most extreme wealth gap, resulting in serious inequalities in livability between various sectors of its population. 

Our framework couples two complementary scenario planning approaches – the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s XSP exploratory scenario planning method (Stapleton 2020), and Multiscale Iterative Scenario Building (MISB; Murphy et al. 2016). 

The work is being undertaken as part of the University of Wyoming’s Wyoming Anticipating the Climate-Water Transition, an interdisciplinary five-year U.S. National Science Foundation-funded project focused on understanding the interactions of social and ecological systems to make better predictions about potential futures in the headwaters of western Wyoming’s interstate river basins. 

The guest

Dr. Jeff Hamerlinck is the founding Director of the Center for Rural Community Resilience and Innovation at the University of Wyoming, where he also leads the Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center as Associate Director of School of Computing and is an AI Presidential Fellow in the Office of the President. 

Trained in geography and community planning, Dr. Hamerlinck holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Colorado-Boulder, is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and maintains the credential of GIS Professional through the Geographic Information Systems Certification Institute. 

Dr. Hamerlinck is immediate past president of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, currently serves on the advisory board of the Consortium for Scenario Planning, and is an appointee to the U.S. National Geospatial Advisory Council. 

A senior member of the science team on UWYO’s Wyoming Anticipating the Climate-Water Transition (WyACT) project, Jeff’s current research interests include scenario planning and geodesign in multifunctional rural landscapes, and digital twin design for smart rural places.

Practical

This seminar will be held on April 27 from 13:00 to 14:00 in Ocean room (de Serres building, Place Croix du Sud 2, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium).

A lunch with the guest speaker will be held next to there, in the cafeteria of the de Serres building, between 12:15 and 13:00, only for participants at the ELI-T seminar.

If you would like to attend the lunch, please register here. 
Please note that registration is mandatory for the lunch and essential for us to plan the right amount of food. Registration for the talk only is appreciated but not required.

The seminar and lunch are free and open to everyone, whether or not you are an ELI member or a UCLouvain member, as long as you are registered.

The seminar can also be attended online. Follow online here: TEAMS link.

Our planet is in the midst of a rapidly changing, human-dominated era, often referred to as the Anthropocene. 

Climate and biodiversity are being altered in complex ways. There are winners, but also several losers among plants, animals, microorganisms and entire ecosystems. Changed abiotic and biotic conditions have profound impacts on life from biomolecules to the entire biosphere and all levels of biological organization in between (organisms, populations, species, communities and ecosystems).

Ecologists and evolutionary biologists face the fascinating challenge of documenting and ultimately understanding these changes. 

Therefore, the Ecology and Biodiversity Section (ELI-V) of the Earth and Life Institute of UCLouvain organizes a two-days symposium on this exciting and complex scientific field: Ecology and Evolution in the Anthropocene. 

With a selection of great keynote speakers, an open call for talks and posters, and a concluding debate, the symposium will offer a very educational and stimulating program on April 29 and 30, 2026. 

Keynote speakers: Jan Christian Habel, Ellen Decaestecker, Ruben Evens 

Jan Christian Habel is a Full Professor in the Department of Environment and Biodiversity at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (Austria), where he leads the Evolutionary Zoology research group. 

Ellen Decaestecker is Full Professor at the Biology Department of KU Leuven and chair of the Interdisciplinary Research Facility Life Sciences at campus Kortijk. 

Ruben Evens is Assistant Professor at UCLouvain and head of the Nox’alis research group, which focuses on terrestrial ecology and biodiversity conservation. 

To learn more about the speakers, read their biographies here. 

Program

Wednesday 29 April

Thursday 30 April

Each talk will consist of 12 minutes of presentation followed by 3 minutes of discussion and Q&A.

We will close the conference with a dialogue on academia and the future of ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation in a rapidly changing world. The conversation will focus particularly on opportunities, challenges and even struggles for young researchers. We do not shy away from sensitive themes such as work-life balance. 

The dialogue will be held between a young academic, Eli Thoré (UNamur) and a professor with more experience in academia, Ellen Decaestecker (KULeuven) and will be moderated by Hans Van Dyck (UCLouvain). The audience will also be able to ask questions or join in the exchange of ideas and experiences.

Registration

Please register by filling out this Forms.

Deadlines:
Deadline for registration: 16/04/2026
Deadline for poster submission: 16/04/2026

Registration Fee: 80€
It includes:
- Access to the full two-day symposium
- Coffee, tea, cold drinks, and snacks during refreshment breaks
- One lunch
- A closing drink at the end of the first symposium day

Organizers

This symposium is organized by members of the Ecology and Biodiversity Pole (ELI-V) of the Earth and Life Institute of UCLouvain (Belgium). ELI-V brings together researchers studying the evolution, functioning, and diversity of living organisms across biological scales. 

The group’s research focuses on how species interact with their environments and how ecological and evolutionary processes shape biodiversity in both natural and human-dominated systems. At an applied level, ELI-V contributes to the conservation of biodiversity and the development of sustainable solutions in agriculture, forestry, and urban ecosystems.
 

Organizing committee:
Angelot Dominique
Baeckens Simon *
Darja Margaux *
De Laender Frederik* (UNamur)
Deconinck Stephane
Destierdt Wendy *
Ferauge Brigitte
Mauro Nicola *
Van Dyck Hans *

* Members of the scientific committee

If you have any questions about the event, please contact us at this address: stephane.deconinck@uclouvain.be. 

Find information on how to get to the conference venue here.