Eating on Earth, 2050: LinYee Yuan & Mats Lederhausen on Feeding 10 Billion

The UN predicts there will be nearly 10 billion people to feed on Earth by 2050. Two experts present their distinct local and global approaches to transforming our food systems for our fifth annual Lucas J. Daniel Series in Sustainable Systems.

LinYee Yuan is founder and editor of MOLD magazine and editorial director for the Emerson Collective. Her recent effort Field Meridians focuses on community development for food sovereignty in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Mats Lederhausen is the board chair at ROTI, a former McDonald’s executive, and an entrepreneur whose investment firm BeCause focuses on building transformative businesses committed to purpose. A conversation moderated by ID Associate Professor Maura Shea follows.

Maura Shea is Co-Director of ID’s Food Systems Action Lab and has worked as an innovation leader at IDEO, the national office of the YMCA, and Feeding America to achieve community wellbeing through collaboration with local collectives.

This conversation will happen in the newest building on Illinois Tech's campus, the Kaplan Institute, which is home to the Institute of Design. This in-person event will also be streamed. Register as a virtual attendee to receive the streaming link.

About the Lucas J. Daniel Series in Sustainable Systems

The focus of ID’s annual event in memory of ID alum Lucas J. Daniel (1974–2017) is to drive discourse in sustainability and systems design, areas Lucas was passionate about. Lucas was a 2005 Institute of Design (ID) graduate who spent 11 years at Chicago design and innovation consultancy gravitytank. There he applied holistic, systems-level thinking to food innovation. Learn more about the series.

About the Institute of Design (ID)

At the Institute of Design (ID) at Illinois Tech, we look at the world in new ways to create the change we hope to see in it. Since our founding by Bauhaus émigré László Moholy-Nagy in 1937, we’ve continually turned design into a powerful tool anyone can use to transform the systems that shape our lives—from cities, education, and finance to food, healthcare, and technology.

We’re the only US design school devoted completely to graduate students, and the first to offer a PhD. By uniting science and rigor with creativity and rapid iteration, we’re recognized around the globe as pioneers in human-centered design, systems design, and other methods that apply design to the real world.

It’s through these unique approaches that students, communities, and corporations learn to observe the systems they’re surrounded by—and envision the new worlds they can build from them. Here, learners and leaders discover what design makes possible. How it enables us to adapt with the speed, scale, and complexity of life. To anticipate change and the impact of our actions. And, most importantly, to imagine—then create—brighter futures for us all. Learn more about ID at id.iit.edu.