Emlyn Koster, PhD, is a geoscientist, museologist and humanist with UK, Canada and US citizenships and travel experiences in the landscapes and cultures of sixty countries. He has been the CEO of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, Ontario Science Centre, Liberty Science Center next to Ellis Island, and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences which was recognized at the White House for outstanding community service. A former board chair of the Geological Association of Canada, Humanitarian of the Year by the American Conference on Diversity, and an inductee of France’s L’Ordre des Palmes Scientifique, he was the 2019 Alumni of Excellence Award honoree of the Faculty of Science at Canada’s University of Ottawa.
An adjunct professor of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at North Carolina State University, his publications and presentations have increasingly infused the largest challenges that confront the Earth with a holistic, past-present-future, all-species perspective. He advocates for the Anthropocene as a transdisciplinary shorthand label for human disruption of the Earth System. Following a keynote presentation at an international symposium on climate change and museums in the UK, the UN invited him to present to its Action for Climate Empowerment conference in Germany, in turn leading to an update of the Paris Climate Agreement to add museums as an agency for educating the public about the climate crisis.
