2025 UMass Boston Stone Living Lab Video Transcript

Here in our capital city, UMass Boston will lead research on coastal resilience and climate justice and act as a national and international convener on climate. This partnership of UMass Boston and the Stone Living Lab is pretty unique because we both have this vision of trying to protect Boston, but also the northeast, and also, frankly, other parts of the world from the impacts of rising seas and more tide and coastal flooding.

So, the idea came out of this vision of the stone foundation of a living laboratory where we would actually, instead of carrying out experiments on nature-based systems in like a laboratory or just using computer models. We would actually carry out experiments in the field, environmentally and societally. It was better to learn from nature and adapt over time so that we could learn not just as an ecosystem and as an environment, but also as a society.

Living Seawalls is founded on around 20 years of research that's been happening in Sydney Harbor. My colleagues and I had been working to understand the impacts of built infrastructure on our marine systems. The living sea walls is a way to recreate habitat through 3D printing and installing panels onto sea walls, which can provide habitat that's otherwise missing. It's incredibly exciting that the first North American installation of living sea walls is right here in Boston.

I've been really impressed with the difference at the Sound Living Lab is making. Through their research and education and community outreach activities to directly enhancing and improving the lives of the citizens of Boston. I'm really hopeful that we can find a way that people and nature can work together to our mutual benefit, and I'm finding more and more with every project that we do that that is true.