Why Geoscience Innovation?

Julia Kumari Drapkin is the CEO of ISeeChange, a climate data and engagement platform to help cities combat climate change. The platform has helped cities generate over $25M in climate investments in underserved communities. Drapkin founded ISeeChange after reporting natural disasters and climate change for 12 years across the globe and in her own backyard on the Gulf Coast. Under her leadership, ISeeChange has received national awards and recognition from the White House Climate Data Initiative, NASA, MIT Solve, Echoing Green, Grist, AGU, AAAS, the United Nations, Verizon, Exelon, Village Capital, and Morgan Stanley. Prior to journalism, Julia did anthropology research for 7 years in Central America where she geeked out on Mayan farmer’s almanacs.

Emily supports core portfolio operations across six sectors at Elemental Excelerator, a nonprofit investor focused on scaling climate solutions with deep community impact. She is passionate about optimizing efficiency and streamlining processes to pave the way for progress. Prior to Elemental Excelerator, Emily spent much of her career as a hydrogeologist and project manager for contaminated sites projects across Canada and the US, including Hawaii. Emily studied Geology and Environmental Science at William & Mary, and holds an MS in Geology from Indiana University.

Dr. Tanya Harrison has worked as a scientist and mission operations specialist on multiple NASA missions to Mars, including the Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance rovers, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Bridging the worlds of Mars and Earth, as well as academia and industry, she has worked as the Director of Science for Impact at Planet Labs and the Director of Research for Arizona State University’s NewSpace Initiative. She is currently a Fellow of the University of British Columbia’s Outer Space Institute and the Aurelia Institute. Tanya holds a Ph.D. in Geology with a Specialization in Planetary Science and Exploration from the University of Western Ontario, a Masters in Earth and Environmental Sciences from Wesleyan University, and B.Sc. in Astronomy and Physics from the University of Washington.

Andre W. Marshall is Vice President for Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact at George Mason University and President of the George Mason Research Foundation. As the university’s senior research officer, Dr. Marshall provides overall leadership for the portfolio of research, innovation, and economic development activities. 

Marshall joined George Mason University from the National Science Foundation, where he served as Program Director for the Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) and Innovation Corps (I-CorpsTM) programs.

Dr. Marshall is a faculty member in the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Volgenau School of Engineering. His research and teaching interests are centered around experimental characterization and computational evaluation of complex turbulent reacting flows and sprays.

Dr. Marshall began his college career at Georgia Tech receiving a BME and MS in mechanical engineering in 1991 and 1992, respectively. In 1996, he completed his PhD in mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Leah Nichols is the Executive Director of George Mason University’s Institute for a Sustainable Earth (ISE), where she leads the ISE team in creating connections – locally, globally, and across disciplines – to put Mason’s research and scholarship into action in support of a sustainable world. Under her leadership, ISE has launched new programs that catalyze the development of communities of research and practice, foster transdisciplinary research teams, and support the co-production of knowledge with local stakeholders.

Nichols came to Mason after 8 years at the National Science Foundation (NSF) where she contributed extensively to the design and management of several agency-wide programs that funded convergent, use-inspired, socio-environmental system science. As the Executive Secretary for NSF’s Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education, she supported the development of reports focused on urban sustainability, human security, and engaged research. She also founded and led an interagency working group to integrate the social sciences throughout the US Global Change Research Program.

Nichols has a PhD from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley and a BS in environmental engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has published articles on the production of actionable knowledge in leading sustainability journals, including Nature Sustainability and Nature Climate Change, and contributed to the US Fourth National Climate Assessment. She was also a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the NSF and a Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Academy of Sciences.

Shah Selbe is an engineer, conservation technologist, and National Geographic Explorer that works with communities, NGOs, academia and developing countries to identify and deploy technologies that can help with their greatest conservation challenges. This includes low-cost observation platforms (conservation drones, sensors, open source dataloggers, satellite imagery tools, etc) and better methods to share and manage the data gathered (using mobile technologies, crowdsourcing, web-based approaches). Since 2009, Shah has been researching this intersection of technology and conservation with a focus on open source technology development.

He founded the nonprofit technology development laboratory Conservify, with the mission to bring open source technologies into conservation and field science. Conservify’s work has included water quality characterization in Peru's Boiling River, biodiversity protection in Botswana's Okavango Delta, tracking glacial melt in Canada's Banff National Park, understanding the behaviors of Congo's lowland gorillas, helping community scientists monitor water in the Amazon Rainforest, drone-based monitoring of Sri Lanka’s blue whales, and many more diverse activities across the globe.

He also founded FieldKit, an open-source software and hardware platform (environmental sensors, app, and FieldKit.org website) that allows individuals and organizations to collect and share field-based research data and tell stories through interactive visualizations. FieldKit’s sensors have been deployed across the globe, including large initiatives in the Amazon Rainforest and the Congo Basin. FieldKit’s newest product line is an underwater water chemistry sonde that is available at a fraction of the cost of the proprietary solutions available on the market.

Shah is also a Nelson Institute Fellow at the University of Wisconsin Madison, a New England Aquarium Ocean Conservation Fellow, a PopTech Social Innovation Fellow, former National Geographic Society Fellow (2016-2019) and sits on the Board of the International Bird Rescue. Before becoming a conservation technologist, Shah spent 10 years as a rocket scientist building and launching satellites with Boeing.

Peter Schlosser is the Vice President and Vice Provost of Global Futures, the University Global Futures Professor and leads the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. He holds joint appointments in the School of Sustainability, the School of Earth and Space Exploration, and the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment.

Prior to joining ASU in January 2018, Dr. Schlosser spent twenty-eight years at Columbia University, where he was the Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel Professor of Geophysics and Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and the deputy director and director of research at the Earth Institute. He also was a member and the founding chair of the Earth Institute faculty and a member of the senior staff at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Before joining Columbia University, he was an Assistant Professor in the Physics Department of the University of Heidelberg.

Schlosser's research focuses on the hydrosphere, primarily the circulation of water in the oceans and groundwater including studies of problems caused by human impact. He is Co-Chair of the Earth League, Chair of the Steering Group of the International Study of Arctic Change, and member of the Boards of the Sustaining Arctic Observing Network and The Sustainability Consortium. He is a member of the German National Academy of Science, and Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Explorers Club. He has served on numerous national and international science steering and advisory committees.