Climate and Communities

Tessa is the Lead Ecosystem Ecologist at the University of Washington Tacoma’s Puget Sound Institute, and the Managing Director of the Ocean Modeling Forum. Tessa is an aquatic ecologist, and her research focuses on the land-water interface, and impacts of watersheds and shorelines on aquatic food webs and ecosystems. She holds a B.A. in political science from UC Berkeley, and a B.S. in wildlife science and a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Washington.  Learn more

Phil is a conservation scientist who is interested in bridging the gaps between theory and practice and between social and natural sciences. The main focus of his current work is developing interdisciplinary tools to inform conservation of marine, aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.

Prior to joining the Nature Conservancy and University of Washington, Phil was a Senior Scientist at NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, WA, USA. He served as the scientific lead of NOAA’s Integrated Ecosystem Assessment efforts in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem and Puget Sound. In the course of this work, he led the development of new analytical tools for characterizing ecosystem health and forecasting the cumulative effects of coastal zone management and climate change on marine ecosystems.

Phil received the Department of Commerce Silver Award and NOAA’s Bronze Medal for his work on marine ecosystems, and the Seattle Aquarium’s Conservation Research Award for his work in Puget Sound. He has published over 150 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters and technical reports, and edited the recent book, “Conservation of the Anthropocene Ocean: interdisciplinary approaches for nature and people”.

Phil’s work has been featured in such news outlets as NPR, PBS, the BBC, MSBNC, The Economist, among others. He recently served as President of the Western Society of Naturalists, and served on numerous editorial boards and scientific advisory panels. Phil received his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of New Hampshire in 1993 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina.In recent years, he have been particularly interested in the social-ecological-systems of temperate rain forests from Washington to Southeast Alaska.

Michele is a Senior Research Fellow in the People & Ecosystems Program at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Australia. Her research draws on theories and methods from sociology and economics to contribute a better understanding of the human side of complex environmental problems. Michele has specialized expertise in social network science, which she applies to explore key issues such as: how environmental knowledge spreads through society, how social networks influence environmental behavior, and how social-ecological interactions drive environmental outcomes. Michele obtained her PhD in Natural Resources and Environmental Management and a Graduate Certificate in Ocean Policy from the University of Hawaii in 2015. Since graduating, she has held a series of Early Career Research Fellowships from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Australian Research Council focused on social networks, social-ecological interactions, and adaptation in marine ecosystems.

Dr. Joshua Cinner grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. He completed a Master’s degree in Marine Affairs from the University of Rhode Island in 2000, and received a PhD from James Cook University in 2006. His research focuses on using social science to improve coral reef management. The interest in this field began in 1996 while working as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in the Montego Bay Marine Park in Jamaica, where he witnessed first hand how conventional conservation strategies were failing because they did not understand or reflect the social, economic, and cultural needs of resource users.

He has since worked with various coastal peoples in the Pacific Islands, South East Asia, East Africa, and the Caribbean to better understand how socioeconomic factors influence the ways in which people use, perceive, and govern coral reefs.

Joshua’s work draws together a wide range of social science disciplines (including human geography, common property, anthropology, and conservation policy) and He often works closely with ecologists on interdisciplinary research topics. Increasingly, his research is moving beyond the case study approach toward a ‘big picture’ comparative exploration of human-environment interactions.

Alison C. Cullen joined the University of Washington Daniel J. Evans School faculty as professor of public policy and governance in 1995. Professor Cullen has published more than 60 scholarly works pertaining to the analysis of risks to human health and the environment, decision making in the face of risks which are uncertain or vary spatially, temporally and across populations, and the application of value of information and distributional techniques. Her specialty areas include human health effects, wildfire risk management and climate impacts. At University of Washington she is also an adjunct professor in the School of Public Health and in the College of the Environment, and serves on the Board of the Program on Climate Change. Professor Cullen is the recipient of the Society for Risk Analysis Distinguished Educator Award (2014), a two time winner of the Evans Student Organization Excellence in Instruction Award (1997, 2015) and the Evans School Dean’s Outstanding Teaching Award (2016).

Professor Cullen previously served on the faculty of the Harvard University School of Public Health. She was an NSF 2017 Faculty Fellow in the Advanced Study Program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a 2017 Computational information Systems Fellow at NCAR, a 2016 Visiting Fellow at Boston’s Health Effects Institute, and a 2007-08 Visiting Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich. She is the recipient of the 2008 Society of Toxicology Award for a Publication Demonstrating the Application of Risk Assessment, the 2003 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Special Recognition in the Field of Air Toxics, the 2002 Chauncey Starr Award from the Society for Risk Analysis, and the 1998 Joan M. Daisey Award from the International Society of Exposure Assessment. Cullen is also Past-President and Fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis.

Professor Cullen is active in risk assessment and management efforts in the U.S. and internationally. She serves on the Chartered Science Advisory Board of the U.S. EPA. and is active in wildfire risk management research with the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Cullen has held positions in the Water Quality Branch of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Gradient Corporation, as well as serving as a technical consultant on many initiatives, including the WA DNR Climate Resilience Advisory Board, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the State of Washington’s Department of Ecology, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Lenfest Foundation Ocean Program and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Professor Cullen holds a Sc.D. in Environmental Health Management and a M.S. in Environmental Health Science, Exposure Assessment and Engineering from Harvard University School of Public Health. She also holds a B.S. in Civil/Environmental Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Dr. Laura Dee is an Assistant Professor of in the EBIO department at CU Boulder. Her lab aims to (1) quantify the impacts of global changes, like disturbances, climate variability, and biodiversity change, on ecosystems, their functions, and their contributions to society; (2) understand how ecosystems provide benefits to people, how global change will alter these relationships, and how to best adapt conservation in response. 

Laura earned her Ph.D. in environmental science & management at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2015, completing a concurrent M.A. in economics, and holds a B.S. in marine biology from Brown University. Laura was previously an Assistant Professor of Conservation Science and a affiliate fellow at the Institute on the Environment at University of Minnesota. As a post-doctoral associate at the University of Minnesota, she examined how climate change affects ecosystem services provided by boreal forests and management strategies to reduce those impacts in a project co-advised by IonE fellows Peter Reich and Steve Polasky.

Mary is a PhD student in the School of Environmental and Forestry Sciences at the University of Washington. She has been working with NOAA as an NSF graduate fellow to investigate the impacts of harmful algal blooms on the Dungeness crab fishery, and is currently developing her PhD project around the impact of climate change on marine social-ecological systems. Mary received her master’s degree from the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington, where she used genetic analysis to study the population structure of Pacific cod around the Korean peninsula.

Steven Gray is an associate professor at Michigan State University. His research focuses on socio-environmental modeling and understanding how individuals and groups make decisions about complex social-ecological systems. He is currently the lead editor on the book, Environmental Modeling with Stakeholders: Methods, Theories and Applications (Springer 2017).  His research has been funded domestically by the National Science Foundation, the Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) and by federal resource management agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the United States Geological Survey.  Internationally his research has been supported by the Leibniz-Institute, the Australian Academy of Sciences and the Belmont Forum.

Chris Harvey is a biologist in the Ecosystem Science Program at the NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, WA. He is co-lead of the NOAA California Current Integrated Ecosystem Assessment, a regional coalition of scientists and policy experts that provides ecosystem-level, transdisciplinary research products and guidance to marine resource managers and stakeholders along the West Coast. His research interests include the trophic ecology of marine organisms and communities in the California Current and in Puget Sound; the roles of climate, biogeochemistry, food web interactions and fisheries in shaping dynamics of marine ecosystems; and how to make ecosystem science products more useful and ready to implement in management and decision-making. He received a BS in Biology from Wake Forest University, a Masters in Fisheries from the University of Washington, and a PhD in Limnology and Marine Science from the University of Wisconsin. His past research has spanned from Arctic streams to the Great Lakes to the Baltic Sea.

Marc Mangel is Distinguished Research Professor of Mathematical Biology at the University of California Santa Cruz, where he has served since 1996, and Chair of the Board of Directors of FishWise, a non-profit company that uses methods of business to increase sales of sustainably harvested fish. He is also Adjunct Professor in the Theoretical Ecology Group, Department of Biology, University of Bergen and Affiliate Research Professor at the University of Washington, Tacoma.   From 1980-1996, Mangel was at the University of California Davis, where he was founding Director of the Center for Population Biology (1989-1993).

His awards include the Koopman Paper Prize from the Operations Research Society of America, 1982; JASA Applications Paper from the American Statistical Association, 1983; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow, 1987; Fulbright Senior Research Fellow, Oxford University, 1988; Distinguished Statistical Ecologist, International Association for Ecology, 1998; Mote Eminent Scholar, Florida State University, 2000; Fellow, California Academy of Sciences, 2000; Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2003; UCSC Academic Senate Excellence in Teaching Award, 2003; Astor Lecturer, University of Oxford, 2007; Kaeser Lecturer University of Wisconsin, 2008; Fellow, Royal Society of Edinburgh, 2009; Kendall Award for the best paper published in The Transactions of the American Fisheries Society  in 2009; Fellow, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), 2013; Fellow, Ecological Society of America, 2016; and Glaser Professor, Florida International University, 2017. He jointly shared the Queen’s Anniversary Prize in 2011 with colleagues at the Sea Mammal Research Unit, University of St. Andrews.

In summer 2013, Mangel was the Principal Scientific Expert  for Australia in the case in the International Court of Justice “Whaling in the Antarctic: Australia v. Japan. New Zealand Intervening”. In June 2014, Mangel received Doctor of Science honoris causafrom the University of Guelph. Citation: “This degree is awarded in recognition of your significant academic contributions combining mathematics and statistics with theoretical ecology and evolutionary biology.  You have profoundly influenced an entire generation of ecologists, environmental scientists and applied mathematicians on how to solve important practical problems and make the world a better place”.

In April 2018, Mangel was elected as Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in December 2018, he received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists.

Mangel has numerous journal publications, about 27,800 citations in Google Scholar, a lifetime h-index of 76 and of 40 for the last five years, and books that include Decision and Control in Uncertain Resource Systems(1985, Academic), Dynamic Modeling in Behavioral Ecology (with Colin Clark, 1988, Princeton), The Ecological Detective. Confronting models with data(with Ray Hilborn, 1997, Princeton University Press), Dynamic State Variable Models in Ecology: Methods and Applications(with Colin Clark, 2000, Oxford University Press), and The Theoretical Biologist’s Toolbox. Quantitative Methods for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology(2006, Cambridge, University Press). He edited Classics of Theoretical Biology(A Special Issue of the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology. Part I: Volume 52 Numbers 1,2. Part II: Volume 53, Numbers 1,2), Sex Allocation and Sex Change: Experiments and Models(Lectures on Mathematics in the Life Sciences, Volume 22) and Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Krill(Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 57(Supplement 3). He has supervised more than 50 undergraduate research projects, 31 PhD students and 31 post-doctoral colleagues.

His professional service includes editorship of Behavioral Ecology, 1994-1999; member of the Committee of Scientific Advisors of the US Marine Mammal Commission (1990-96); member (1988-1993) and then chair (1990-1993) of the SIAM-AMS Committee on Mathematics in the Life Sciences; twice (1988, 1991) member of the US delegation to the Scientific Committee of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources; member of the Ecosystem Advisory Panel (1997-2000; NRC appointment); member of the Science Advisory Board of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (1998-2001); member of the NOAA Fisheries [Salmon] Recovery Science Review Panel (2004-2010; NRC appointment); member (2004-2008) and chair (2008-2011) of the Special Committee on Seals, a statutory committee of the British government. (It was for the SCOS work that Mangel shared in the Queen’s Anniversary Prize.); and Chair of the Ecosystem Sciences external review committee, Northwest Fisheries Science Center (2016).

Web page: http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~msmangel/.

Google Scholar web page: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-HwCwkAAAAAJ&hl=en

Kristin Marshall joined the NWFSC in 2017 as a research biologist and the Management Strategy Evaluation Coordinator.  Prior to that, she did postdoctoral research in the Ecosystem Program at NWFSC where she worked with the California Current Atlantis ecosystem model, and at the UW School of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences where her work supported the development of guidance for Fishery Ecosystem Plans.  Kristin earned a PhD in Ecology from Colorado State University, a MS in Aquatic and Fishery Sciences from UW, and a BA in Marine Biology from Boston University. 

Kristin’s research focuses on understanding how species and ecosystems respond to climate change and developing and applying transdisciplinary approaches to support ecosystem-based fisheries management. As NWFSC’s Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) Coordinator, one of Kristin’s primary responsibilities is to support and coordinate MSE research and activities at the Center.  Her current MSE research focuses on building environmental drivers into the ongoing Pacific Hake/Whiting MSE to test the robustness of Whiting management to environmental variability and long-term change. She is also involved with developing tools and approaches to support ecosystem-scale MSEs and incorporating environmental and ecosystem considerations into management advice

Steve Miller started his career in computer science, earning his BS at Stanford and continuing on to work at Google on a variety of projects, including adding ocean features to Google Earth. That project piqued his interest in natural resource and environmental economics, leading him back to school. Since earning a PhD in 2015 from UC Santa Barbara, he worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota before moving to the Environmental Studies Program at CU Boulder. His current research involves combinations of three primary areas: (1) uses of machine learning in policy analysis, (2) natural resource management (especially fisheries) and (3) understanding drivers of environmentally-related innovation and technological change.

Laura Nelson’s love of water drives most of her professional and recreational pursuits. Originally from Hinsdale, IL, Laura grew up spending time around the lakes of northern Wisconsin and Michigan before pursuing a degree in biology at Dartmouth College. Following her time at Dartmouth, she worked for several years and as a scientist for the Sea Education Association, sailing on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and teaching undergraduates and high school students about the ocean. Eventually, Laura moved on to the University of Washington where she completed a Master of Marine and Environmental Affairs and began working for the Makah Tribe on the Washington coast. Laura is interested in the human dimensions of ocean and coastal ecosystems, particularly the pathways through which environmental health affects human health and wellbeing. He PhD work focuses on aspects of vulnerability in fishing communities including how climate change may impact marine subsistence food systems of the Makah Tribe.

André is a Professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University Washington, Seattle, USA and the currently the Director of the School. He received his B.Sc, M.Sc and Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Before joining the University of Washington, Dr Punt was a Principal Research Scientist with the CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research in Australia. Dr. Punt has been involved in stock assessment and fisheries management for over 25 years and has been recognized for his contributions in this area with awards from CSIRO, the University of Washington, the Australian Society for Fish Biology, and the American Fisheries Society. The research undertaken by Dr. Punt and the MPAM (Marine Population and Management) group at the University of Washington relates broadly to the development and application of fisheries stock assessment techniques, bioeconomic modelling, and the evaluation of the performance of stock assessment methods and harvest control rules using the Management Strategy Evaluation approach.

Currently, projects that Dr. Punt is undertaking with his research group include integrating genetic methods with traditional fisheries management approaches, assessment and management methods for data-poor methods, and understanding the impact of climate change and environmental variation on the performance of assessment and management methods. Dr. Punt has conducted stock assessments for a wide range of species, ranging from anchovies and sardines, to groundfish, tunas, and cetaceans. Dr. Punt has published over 250 papers in the peer-reviewed literature, along with over 400 technical reports. He was recently a member of a National Research Council panel on evaluating the effectiveness of fish stock rebuilding in the United States. Dr Punt is currently a member of the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, the advisory committee for Center for the Advancement of Population Assessment Methodology, the Crab Plan Team of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, and the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission.

Jameal Samhouri leads the Ecosystem Science Program at the NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, WA. His research focuses on adapting ecological principles to inform ocean management and conservation, using a combination of theory, quantitative analysis, and fieldwork. Jameal serves as a core team member for the Pacific Fisheries Management Council Climate and Communities Initiative and on the Implementation Team for the Western Regional Action Plan associated with the National Climate Science Strategy at NOAA Fisheries. He completed both of his degrees in ecology and evolutionary biology (PhD, UCLA, 2007; AB, Princeton University, 2000).

Corey is a doctoral student working on fisheries and public health issues related to community sustainability with Phil Levin in his Interdisciplinary Conservation Lab at the University of Washington School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. She has worked in the environmental advocacy community since 2011 on efforts related to climate change, West Coast fish conservation, and ecosystem-based management. She is a member of the Pacific Fishery Management Council (CA-obligatory), on the advisory board of California Sea Grant, and an Ocean Nexus Research Associate. Previously she was a John A. Knauss Fellow with the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources, observed in the North Pacific groundfish fleet, and served as the minority health epidemiologist for the state of Michigan. She is a returned Peace Corps Philippines Volunteer and holds a BA in biology from Occidental College and a MPH from Yale.

Genoa is a marine ecologist currently working to support the Ocean Modeling Forum at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on how temperate marine communities respond to human-driven disturbances. As a Master’s student she studied how an invasive alga alters species diversity and production in southern California kelp forests. Additionally, she worked on a team of scientists to assess differences in communities and ecosystem function between kelp forests and urchin barrens across the Aleutian Island archipelago in Alaska. She holds a M.S. from San Diego State University and a B.S. from California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo.