Yale Center for Geospatial Solutions has its first executive director

April 25, 2024

[Summary: Jennifer Marlon has been appointed the inaugural executive director of the Yale Center for Geospatial Solutions (YCGS). She will begin her appointment on July 1, 2024, working in partnership with faculty co-directors Karen Seto, Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science at the Yale School of the Environment, and Costas Arkolakis, Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.]

Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Jennifer Marlon as executive director of the Yale Center for Geospatial Solutions (YCGS), effective July 1, 2024. In this inaugural role, Jenn will develop and implement a strategic plan for the new center, creating a robust infrastructure to support world-class geospatial research and resources at the university. She will collaborate closely with the center’s faculty co-directors, Karen Seto, Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science at the Yale School of the Environment, and Costas Arkolakis, Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Known for her work on climate change, environmental communications, and remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS), Jenn has spent the last decade of her career at the Yale School of the Environment, where she is a senior research scientist and lecturer, as well as director of data science for the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Drawing on multidisciplinary theory and methods, she has conducted research on paleofire records, shedding light on long-term fire activity and yielding ways to simulate future events. In addition, her research on Americans’ risk perception related to climate events has informed those working to produce effective and targeted climate change-related messages. As director of data science at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, Jenn has informed effective science communication and policy through maps and visualizations such as the Yale Climate Opinion Maps and Factsheets, the Six Americas Super Short Survey (SASSY), the Climate Change Opinion Explorer, and heatwave risk perceptions. She has also developed a global paleofire database used to understand the history of wildfires and their interactions with climate and human activities.

A widely-respected expert on climate change communication and engagement, Jenn has consulted for national and international government agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency; corporations working on sustainability, including Google and Meta; and non-profit organizations such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, the Sierra Club, and the League of Women Voters. She regularly appears in the media discussing the relationship between climate change and human vulnerability, and she has authored over seventy-five peer-reviewed papers in journals such as Science, Nature Geoscience, Nature Climate Change, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. in geography from the University of Oregon, where she studied paleoclimatology and paleoecology.

Jenn’s appointment marks a crucial milestone for the Yale Center for Geospatial Solutions. Her leadership, combined with the expertise of the faculty co-directors, will accelerate progress in establishing a transformational hub for research, training, and engagement in geospatial science, data, and analysis. Please join me in welcoming Jenn to this new role.

Sincerely,

Michael Crair
Vice Provost for Research