(Add the talk’s title and a sentence or two on what it covered.)

The roundtable ran three keynotes and breakout sessions, on biodiversity leadership, biodiversity assessment, and biodiversity finance, aimed at turning discussion into collaborative action towards a nature-positive future.

Owen co-moderated the Biodiversity Leadership breakout together with Gabriela Schaepman-Strub (UZH), Meike Müller-Forte (Siemens), and Anja Helena Liski (Oliver Wyman). The session argued that meaningful leadership on biodiversity loss usually emerges through everyday decisions and influence rather than perfect strategies or formal authority, that it depends on cross-sectoral collaboration between science and business, and that the aim should be transformative action rather than simple information transfer — themes echoed in the World Biodiversity Forum’s 2026 focus on “Leading Transformation Together”.

The other two breakouts covered biodiversity assessment — recognising that biodiversity can be measured in many ways, so the starting point should be the information actually needed rather than a search for the single best metric — and biodiversity finance, on biodiversity loss as an emerging financial risk that also opens up investment opportunities in nature-based and sustainable solutions.

Opening the evening, Rector Michael Schaepman illustrated the scale of the problem: compressed into diamonds, the world’s annual rise in atmospheric carbon (3.6 gigatonnes) would amount to around 18 quadrillion carats — enough to fill Lake Zurich within four years. Vice-Rector Gabriele Siegert set out UZH’s 2019 sustainability policy and its Strategy 2030, spanning operations, research, teaching, and public engagement, pointing to concrete progress such as an 18% cut in catering-related emissions by 2024 and new degree programmes including a Sustainable Finance minor and a Bachelor in Sustainability. Researchers Christian Huggel (on glacier melt, permafrost loss, and urban heatwaves) and Zacharias Sautner (on sustainability as a financial risk and opportunity) each gave a short talk on their own work, and Dean Katharina Michaelowa described the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences’ internal carbon levy (CHF 130 per tonne CO₂) that funds climate-friendlier travel.

That closing panel looked beyond UZH itself, with David Schimel (Research Scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory), Sonia I. Seneviratne (Professor, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich), and Marco Lambertini (Convener, Nature Positive Initiative). All three argued for a fundamental shift: Lambertini said the world still clings to a nature-destroying economic model despite the evidence, and that prosperity isn’t possible without intact nature; Seneviratne pointed out that around 90% of CO₂ emissions still come from fossil energy, and that shifting to renewables is both ecologically necessary and increasingly the cheaper option; and Schimel reflected that science had underestimated both the pace of technological change and the true cost of climate damage — concluding that climate action is now a matter of economic sense rather than sacrifice.

SYNT, the Swiss Young Naturalists’ Tournament (“where tomorrow’s scientists meet”), is a competitive science event in which teams of students research an open-ended scientific problem and then present and defend their findings against other teams. The workshop is a full-day introduction to the tournament, aimed both at registered competitors and at students still deciding whether to take part. It walks participants through developing a research strategy for a tournament problem, the tournament’s structure, presentation and discussion protocols, and includes a live “Science Fight” demonstration of the competitive format itself, plus mentoring from experienced coaches.

The Science Lab’s own format is built around doing rather than just listening: participants work through activities and experiments pitched at their class level, across subjects from biology and chemistry to physics, sustainability, and digitalisation. Hosting a SYNT workshop there is a chance to bring the group’s own thinking — about ecological forecasting, food webs, and how ecosystems respond to change — to an audience well outside the usual academic seminar room.

Alongside hosting the workshop, Owen also judged as part of SYNT 2026.

The panel brought together researchers working across different strands of One Health — the idea that human, animal, and ecosystem health are interconnected and need to be addressed together. Alongside Owen, then Director of the URPP Global Change and Biodiversity at UZH, the panel included Dr Andrew D. Kambugu (Executive Director, Uganda Infectious Diseases Institute, Makerere University), Prof. Andrea Winkler (Co-Director, Centre for Global Health, Technical University of Munich, and Professor at the University of Oslo), Prof. Elisabeth Stark (Vice President Research, UZH, and Una Europa Board Member), and Prof. Bruno González Zorn (Head of the Antimicrobial Resistance Unit, Complutense University of Madrid, and Chair of the Una Europa One Health Focus Area). Together they discussed why interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral collaboration is essential for tackling global health challenges, drawing on their own work spanning infectious disease, global health, biodiversity, and antimicrobial resistance.