Lucile Jones of Jones Center for Science and Society Honored for Contributions to Public Understanding of Geoscience

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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is pleased to recognize Dr. Lucile M. Jones, Founder and Chief Scientist of the Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society in Pasadena, California, as the 2022 recipient of the AGI Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Public Understanding of the Geosciences.

Dr. Jones is a recognized expert community earthquake safety and resilience, natural hazards, and disaster risk reduction. Following three decades of service as a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) seismologist, she founded the Jones Center for Science and Society to foster the understanding and application of scientific information for more resilient communities. She also helped create the California Integrated Seismic Network — uniting the seismic monitoring of the USGS; the California Institute of Technology (Caltech); the University of California, Berkeley; and the California Geological Survey — and was the Mayor's Science Advisor for Seismic Safety for the City of Los Angeles and served on California's Seismic Safety Commission.

In her work, Dr. Jones not only collaborates closely with elected officials to establish effective seismic resilience programs, but also trains scientists in becoming better communicators and working with decision makers and to developing community-based resilience programs. Her skill in communicating with journalists and connecting with the public has made her a recognized and trusted voice on behalf of science in the media.

Dr. Jones is the author of The Big Ones, which won an Amazon Best Science Book award, and has published over 100 additional works. At USGS, she developed methodology for estimating the probability that an earthquake will be a foreshock to a larger event, leading to a national science strategy for natural hazards research as well as the first American major earthquake drill, the Great ShakeOut, which has expanded to encompass over 60 million participants worldwide. In addition, Dr. Jones launched the podcast 'Getting Through It' with co-host John Bwarie.

She has received numerous awards, including the Alquist Award from the California Earthquake Safety Foundation, the Shoemaker Award for Lifetime Achievements in Science Communication from USGS, the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal from the Partnership for Public Service, the Ambassador Award from the American Geophysical Union, and the Frank Press Public Service Award from the Seismological Society of America.

Dr. Jones also is a Research Associate at Seismological Laboratory of Caltech Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences and served as the Wayne Morse Chair in Science, Policy, and the Public at Oregon State University from 2019 to 2021. She holds a Ph.D. in Geophysics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Arts in Chinese Language and Literature from Brown University.

"I'm grateful not only for receiving this award myself but also for the fact that AGI offers it, because we have to acknowledge the contribution that scientists make in building public understanding," Dr. Jones said. "Especially in a time of climate change, we scientists need to be sharing information beyond our journal articles, and we need the larger public to understand geoscience as never before. For people to believe the science, Earth scientists must engage."

The AGI award is presented to a person, organization, or institution in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the public understanding of the geosciences.

About AGI The American Geosciences Institute (AGI), a federation of scientific and professional associations representing over a quarter-million geoscientists, is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to serving the geoscience community and addressing the needs of society. AGI headquarters are in Alexandria, Virginia. ____________ Contact: Geoff Camphire, Communicationsgac@americangeosciences.org