10/27: Accelerating Environmental Forecasting Symposium

Jonathan Huggins
Jonathan Huggins is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics and founding member of Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences at Boston University. He is also a Data Science Faculty Fellow and an affiliated faculty member of the Department of Computer Science and the BU Program in Bioinformatics. Prior to joining BU, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard. He completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018. Previously, he received a B.A. in Mathematics from Columbia University and an S.M. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research centers on the development of fast, trustworthy machine learning and AI methods that balance the need for computational efficiency and the desire for statistical optimality with the inherent imperfections that come from real-world problems, large datasets, and complex models. His current applied work is focused on methods to enable more effective scientific discovery from high-throughput and multi-modal genomic data.

Mark Urban

Mark C. Urban is an award-winning professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut, founder and director of the Center of Biological Risk, co-leader of the Evome Institute, co-leader of the Eco Code working group of GEO BON, and a global expert on climate change impacts on nature and evolutionary ecology. An avid field biologist, Mark takes every opportunity to get out in the field to learn about the diversity of life and threats to it. He routinely spends time in ponds, lakes, and streams in regions ranging from New England to the North Slope of Alaska. He founded and currently directs the Center of Biological Risk, the first center devoted to forecasting complex risks to society mediated by ecosystems. He has authored over 100 scientific articles, appearing in top journals such as Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Nature Climate Change and has been cited more than 20,000 times. By integrating ecology, evolution, and genomics, his work has uncovered new principles that routinely challenge existing ideas, including the spatial scale of adaptation, the importance of adaptation in ecology, and highlighting the joint ecological and evolutionary responses to global change. Most recently, his work has focused on designing global efforts to estimate and mitigate extinction risks from climate change to biodiversity.

His work on climate change impacts on species extinctions was highlighted as one of the top scientific discoveries of 2015 by Discover Magazine and in The Royal Society’s update to the 5th IPCC report. His research has been covered by news outlets around the world including The New York Times, NPR, CBS, CNN, BBC, Associated Press, Washington Post, The Guardian, and National Geographic. He has consulted on stories about climate change appearing in National Geographic, Sir David Attenborough’s documentary Climate Change – The Facts, and the television series, Years of Living Dangerously. His opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, and Science. Since 2015, he has led an annual contingent of UConn students, faculty, and staff to the United Nation’s summit on climate change. He leads a graduate training program on environmental risks and teaches courses in ecology, evolutionary ecology, and global change biology. Mark has given more than 100 presentations on his work, including TEDx and the Association for the Advancement of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded both the Young Investigator and Presidential awards from the American Society of Naturalists, was the Arden chair of ecology and evolutionary biology and a Leverhulme visiting professor, has twice been named an ISI Highly Cited Researcher, and is a fellow of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering.

Tracy Fanara

Dr. Tracy Fanara is an environmental engineer, research scientist, and award-winning science communicator, bridging weather, water, and ecology through research and storytelling. She holds a B.S., M.E., and Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Florida.

After a decade of engineering design, Fanara also held scientific and leadership roles at NOAA and Mote Marine Laboratory, where her work spanned coastal modeling, hydrology, harmful algal blooms, ecological forecasting and monitoring, community science, and environmental health. She now serves as Director of Community Engagement and Science Communication for NOAA’s Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC), CEO of Inspector Planet; a Technical Lead at Weston and Sampson and COO of Project ENKI, an initiative focused on transforming flood data and forecasts into actionable information for communities.

Tracy serves as Chair of the American Meteorological Society Committee on Ecological Forecasting in effort to bridge weather, climate and ecological forecasting communities. Through Inspector Planet, she develops policy, works with congressional representatives and science organizations, develops environmental education and communication programs, STEM camps, curricula, and hands-on experiences that connect students and communities with real-world Earth system science.

As a television presenter and contributor, Fanara uses storytelling to connect weather events and environmental hazards to the larger Earth systems driving them. She has been recognized by numerous organizations, universities, and media outlets for her work in science communication and STEM engagement, including The Weather Channel, Xylem YSI, The Observer, IF/THEN and #IfThenSheCan, Project Inspire, and the National Science Leaders of America.

Nick Reich
Nick Reich is a Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences. His research group, the Reich Lab (https://reichlab.io), focuses on developing statistical models and open-source software to support public health response during infectious disease outbreaks. Dr. Reich is a co-Principal Investigator of a CDC-funded Insight Net Center of Implementation, and also directs an Influenza National Forecasting Center of Excellence. He co-founded and led the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub, an international modeling consortium that collected short-term forecasts of covid trends and generated ensemble forecasts that became the official public forecast disseminated by CDC during the pandemic.

Kayoko Shioda
Kayoko Shioda, PhD, DVM, MPH, is an Assistant Professor of Global Health at the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) as well as a Research Core Director at the Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases (CEID). She is an infectious disease epidemiologist whose research integrates epidemiologic data, causal inference, and mechanistic transmission modeling to understand infectious disease dynamics and evaluate intervention strategies. Her work spans vaccine evaluation, infectious disease forecasting, and the effects of environmental and ecological factors on disease transmission across diverse settings.

Kris Karnauskas
Kris Karnauskas is a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and an Associate Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC) at the University of Colorado Boulder, with secondary faculty appointments in the CU School of Medicine and the Colorado School of Public Health. Prior to joining the CU Boulder faculty in 2015, Kris spent six years on the faculty of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography (also teaching at Boston College) followed by sabbatical at the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL) in Paris, France through a Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. During the spring of 2022, Kris was on sabbatical at Harvard University’s Center for the Environment. Kris completed his B.S. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ph.D. at the University of Maryland-College Park, both in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Ocean and Climate Physics at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. Kris currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Geophysical Research Letters and co-chairs the Joint US CLIVAR/NIH Working Group on Climate & Health, and recently served on the Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) of the U.S. Climate Variability and Predictability Program (US CLIVAR). Kris was the recipient of the 2017 AGU Ocean Sciences Early Career Award and the 2024 AGU Atmospheric Sciences Turco Lectureship.