Panelist Bios

Monday, October 10, 2022 3 PM MDT

Mile High Ballroom 2C

Karen Berry was the State Geologist and Director of the Colorado Geological Survey from 2011 until her recent retirement. Karen is a certified planner and a professional geologist with decades of experience working with local communities and national organizations on a variety of natural hazard and land use issues. She also served as President of the Association of American State Geologists, Chair of the Western States Seismic Policy Council, Chair of the Upper South Platte Watershed Coalitions, the AGI Critical Issues Committee, the Denver Regional Council of Governments, the Colorado Municipal League Policy Committee, the National League of Cities Natural Resources Committee, and the policy committee of the National Association of Conservation Districts. Karen was also elected to her local city council and soil conservation district board.

David Curtiss currently serves as the Executive Director of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) and the AAPG Foundation. His technical expertise is in petroleum systems and basin modeling, and he has contributed to basin studies in Algeria, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Russia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, and the United States. He has conducted global opportunity assessments for several international oil companies. In 2001-2002 he served in the U.S. Congress as the American Geosciences Institute’s Congressional Science Fellow working for Rep. J.C. Watts, Jr. (R-Okla.; retired), then chairman of the House Republican Conference. Mr. Curtiss holds degrees in geology, earth resources management, and business.

Deborah Glickson is the Director of the Board on Earth Sciences and Resources and the Water Science and Technology Board at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. At the National Academies, she has worked on topics including decadal surveys on Earth and ocean sciences, Earth system science, the Gulf Coast’s coupled natural–human system, geoscience education, assuring laboratory quality, methane hydrates, coal mining and human health, future U.S. water priorities, and marine hydrokinetic energy. From 2015-2016, Dr. Glickson was Associate Director of the Cooperative Institute for Ocean Exploration, Research, and Technology at Florida Atlantic University Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution. She was also a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellow and worked on coastal and ocean policy and legislation in the U.S. Senate. Dr. Glickson has an M.S. in geology from Vanderbilt University and a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Washington. Her doctoral research focused on magmatic and tectonic contributions to mid-ocean ridge evolution and hydrothermal activity at the Endeavour Segment of the Juan de Fuca Ridge.

Jakob Lindaas is a Legislative Assistant in the Office of U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico where he advises the Senator on agriculture, transportation, infrastructure, telecommunications, and Indian Affairs issues. He has also served as a Professional Staff Member for the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, chaired by Representative Kathy Castor of Tampa, FL, working on climate policy across a range of emissions reduction, adaptation, and resilience goals. Previously he was the 2020-2021 American Geosciences Institute William L. Fisher Congressional Geoscience Fellow, serving in Senator Heinrich’s office and working primarily on climate, energy, and natural resources issues. Dr. Lindaas is an atmospheric chemist by training, earning a Ph.D. from Colorado State University where his research focused on measurements of reactive nitrogen in wildfire smoke and empirical analysis of the impacts of oil and gas activities and wildfire smoke on local ozone pollution in the Colorado Front Range. Dr. Lindaas has had a long-standing interest in the connections between science and policy, graduating with a B.A. in Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and is an active advocate for connecting geoscientists to public decision-making at all levels of government.

Barbara Ransom is a Program Director and 20-year veteran at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the Directorate of Geosciences (GEO). She has managed many earth, ocean, and cross-disciplinary NSF programs and is the originator and Lead of the NSF GEO Innovation Hub in the GEO Front Office that she created to promote use-inspired and translational research to geoscience communities and provide them with funding opportunities and strategies to move the results of their GEO-funded research to society and the economy. Barbara is presently building a portfolio of 15 or more industry-university cooperative research centers that engage universities and their faculty in solving some of the most pressing problems facing society related to geo-economic sectors like wildfires, mining, marine fisheries, and geohazards. She is also active in building partnerships with other federal agencies to provide paid, non-academic internships for graduate students to increase their employment opportunities; helping faculty understand how many of the new NSF programs focusing on innovation and entrepreneurship work and strategies they can use to produce successful proposals; and encouraging geo-entrepreneurs, providing them with the knowledge and opportunities they need to start their own innovation-based companies. A graduate of UC Berkeley in theoretical geochemistry and former soft money scientist for over a decade at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography working on sequestration of carbon in continental margin sediments, Barbara came to Washington DC in 2002 to run the geoscience, nanomaterial, condense matter physics, and thin film catalysis programs at the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund before moving to the NSF in 2004.

Naomi Oreskes is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. She is an internationally renowned geologist, science historian, and author of both scholarly and popular books and articles on the history of earth and environmental science. Her authored or co-authored books include The Rejection of Continental Drift (1999), Plate Tectonics: An Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth (2001), Merchants of Doubt (2010), the Collapse of Western Civilization (2014), Discerning Experts (2019), Why Trust Science? (2019), and Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know about the Ocean (2021).

Oreskes has been a leading voice on the science and politics of anthropogenic climate change. Her 2004 essay “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” (Science 306: 1686)–the first peer-reviewed paper to document the scientific consensus on this crucial issue–has been cited more than 2500 times. It was featured in the landmark Royal Society publication, “A Guide to Facts and Fictions about Climate Change," and in the Academy-award winning film, An Inconvenient Truth. Her 2010 book, Merchants of Doubt (co-authored with Erik M. Conway), has been translated into nine languages and made into a documentary film produced by Participant Media and distributed by SONY Pictures Classics.

In 2018 she was named a Guggenheim Fellow for a book project with Erik M. Conway, The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market. It will be released by Bloomsbury Press in February 2023.

Eric J. Pyle is a professor of geology at James Madison University, specializing in geoscience education and teacher preparation. He has published on science teacher preparation and professional development as well as instructional materials development and evaluation. He has served in the leadership of five NSF-funded projects, including grants for GK-12 Teaching Fellows, GeoEd, and the Robert C. Noyce program. He was a member of the Earth & Space Science (ESS) Design Team for A Framework for K-12 Science Education and was a primary reviewer for all drafts of the Next Generation Science Standards. He teaches coursework in Earth materials, contemporary Earth issues, and planetary geology, as well as joint courses in secondary teaching methods. Currently serving as the Retiring President of the National Science Teaching Association (NSTA; 2022-23), he previously served on the Board of Directors for NSTA heading the Preservice Teacher Preparation Division from 2014-2017. He is a past president of the Eastern Section of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT), the West Virginia Science Teachers Association (WVSTA) and the Virginia Association of Science Teachers (VAST). He currently serves as the Co-Curator of the JMU Mineral Museum, for Education & Outreach. He was recently named to the Science Assessment Framework Steering and Development Committees for the 2028 NAEP Science Framework.

Throughout his career, Pyle has been honored for his contributions to science education. He received the Gustav Ohaus Award in 1999, the WVU Outstanding Teaching Award in 2001, the JMU College of Science and Mathematics Outstanding Service Award in 2015, the JMU Provost’s Award Excellence in Assessment in 2016 and for Global Education in 2022, and VAST Recognition in Science Education in 2016. Pyle was also named a Fellow by the Geological Society of London in 2016 and by the GSA in 2019. His field-teaching team was honored with the GSA/Exxon-Mobil Field Camp Excellence Award in 2021. Most recently, he was named a Fellow of the National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA). He received a BS cum Laude in Earth science from UNC-Charlotte (1983), an MS in Geology from Emory University (1986), and a PhD in Science Education from the University of Georgia (1995).