Dr. Kim Waddell is board chair of UCS. Dr. Waddell, a prominent environmental scientist with deep expertise in natural hazard mitigation, coastal and marine ecosystems, and other issues at the intersection of climate change and resource management, has been involved with UCS for nearly two decades.
Dr. Waddell is the project lead for the next US Virgin Islands Hazard Mitigation and Resilience Plan Update with support from FEMA and the Virgin Islands Emergency Management Agency (VITEMA). He is also the Director for the Virgin Islands Established Program for Stimulating Competitive Research (VI-EPSCoR)—a National Science Foundation-supported research capacity building program based at the University of the Virgin Islands that focuses on coral reef ecosystem monitoring, health, and resilience, as well as STEM education research and opportunities for underrepresented minority students from K-12 through MS degrees.
Prior to that, Dr. Waddell was a Senior Program Officer with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Gulf Research Program, which works to improve understanding of the Gulf of Mexico’s interconnecting human, environmental, and energy systems following the 2011 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Prior to joining the Gulf Research Program, he served as a study director for over a dozen National Academies reports on agriculture, fisheries, and other natural resource management topics. He also served as executive director for the largest private research foundation for the California wine industry, and worked to build marine and environmental research capacity in the Caribbean region as a research associate professor at the Texas A&M University. Dr. Waddell received his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of South Carolina and his B.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz.