Dr. Deborah Balk is Professor of Public Affairs in the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College and at the Graduate Center (in the Sociology and Economics Programs) and School of Public Health (Epi) at the City University of New York (CUNY). She is also Director of the CUNY Institute for Demographic Research (CIDR). An expert on population-climate interactions, she has used a spatial demographic lens to study a wide range of demographic and health outcomes, poverty and vulnerability. She has published widely on the global, national, and local scales. She recently completed service as Co-Chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change’s 4th Assessment and was a member of Society and Economy Working Group of the New York State Climate Impacts Assessment. She now is a member of the Health Chapter for the 6th National Climate Assessment. She also serves as a member of the US Census Bureau’s Scientific Advisory Committee and as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Population. She received her PhD in Demography from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Michigan.

Dr. Lori Hunter is Director of the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder as well as Professor of Sociology. With over 30 years in the academy, Dr. Hunter has substantial experience in research leadership, interdisciplinary research collaboration, and student training and mentoring.

Dr. Hunter has two primary areas of research. First, she examines migration as related to environmental context, with a focus on rural South Africa and Mexico. She also examines trends in rural America as related to well-being including health and migration impacts of extreme events on the rural elderly. Dr. Hunter’s scholarship has been published in a wide variety of academic outlets such as Population and Development Review, Annual Review of Sociology, Population & Environment, and International Migration Review.

Dr. Hunter has been an invited expert for the United Nations, the World Bank, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, among others. She is a recent member on the National Academy of Sciences Board on Environment and Society, as well as the White House-requested Roundtable on Climate-Related Risks and Opportunities on the Macroeconomy. She served as Editor-in-Chief for Population and Environment, a Springer journal from 2007-2017. Her PhD in Sociology and Demography is from Brown University.

Alex Mikulas is a postdoctoral associate at the Center for Aging, Climate, and Health (CACHE) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, in affiliation with the Institute for Behavioral Science. In 2024, Alex earned his PhD in Sociology/Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Alex is an applied spatial demographer, quantitative and spatial data methodologist, and housing scholar. His research covers topics in spatial inequality, spatial demography, and socioeconomic wellbeing as they relate to ever-evolving dynamics in the US housing landscape. His independent and collaborative projects examine post-2008 dynamics in housing landscapes and racial segregation, the social capital implications of historical spatial exclusion, and residential mobility trajectories of housing subsidy voucher recipients, among others.

Julia Shipman brings over a decade of experience in non-profit and higher education program management to her role as Program Administrator for the Center for Aging, Climate, and Health (CACHE). With a strong background in operations, HR, and program coordination, she has successfully supported interdisciplinary initiatives and guided teams toward achieving meaningful impact.

At CACHE, Julia oversees the center’s operations, supports the development of its virtual presence, and works to expand awareness of its mission to address the interconnected challenges of aging, health, and environment. 

Dr. Sara Curran is a demographer and Professor International Studies, Sociology, and Public Policy at the University of Washington. She is Director of the UW’s Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology and currently a member of the NASEM Advisory Committee to the US Global Change Research Committee. Curran researches demography dynamics, gender, migration, and environment in many contexts around the globe. Current projects include: 1) improving small area population estimates; 2) social change and migration dynamics, 3) climate change, natural disasters, and population change, 4) several projects related to applied research and training, and 5) global studies research.

Dr. Jessica Finlay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. She has an MA and PhD in Geography and Gerontology from the University of Minnesota and completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Michigan. Dr. Finlay is a health geographer and environmental gerontologist who uses mixed methods to investigate how built, social, and natural environments affect health, wellbeing, and quality of life. In particular, she focuses on aging in place and cognitive health disparities among underrepresented and underserved older adults. Dr. Finlay also investigates impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on neighborhood environments and health among aging Americans; and how hazards may pose dementia risk through social and behavioral pathways. Her NIH and NSF-funded research has received recognitions including the Matilda White Riley Behavioral and Social Science Honors. She has received the Health and Medical Geography Emerging Scholar Award, National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center Rising Star Award, and Gerontological Society of America Carroll L. Estes Rising Star Award.

Dr. Harry Smolker is an Assistant Research Professor at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado Boulder. His interdisciplinary research integrates methods from cognitive neuroscience, behavioral genetics, and environmental health to understand how genes and environments shape our brains and minds. His work addresses questions such as: How does exposure to air pollution during development influence risk for mental illness decades later in adulthood? What neural mechanisms underlie repetitive negative thinking, and how might they be targeted to promote healthier patterns of thought? Why do individuals differ in emotionality and cognitive control, and what biological factors contribute to these differences? Harry received his PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2020.

Dr. Shrad Shukla is a Researcher with the Climate Hazards Center in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a large-scale hydrologist with expertise in drought monitoring and seasonal-scale climate and drought forecasting. His research focuses on improving drought monitoring and early warning capabilities using Earth observations, climate models, and remote sensing datasets, with an emphasis on drought impact forecasting (such as crop yield) and building capacity to support climate-informed decision-making. Dr. Shukla currently serves as a topical editor for the European Geophysical Union’s journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS) and associate editor for the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Hydrometeorology, and has served as co-chief editor for Frontier’s Climate Services. He received his PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Washington.

Dr. Frank Heiland is Professor of Public and International Affairs in the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College and at the Graduate Center (in the Economics and Demography Programs) of the City University of New York (CUNY). He is also Associate Director of the CUNY Institute for Demographic Research (CIDR). An economic demographer, he studies population aging, retirement and Social Security, mortality, health and disability, and family demography. His current research examines the determinants and socioeconomic context of dying unclaimed, the health effects of extreme weather and air pollution, disaster exposure and displacement, and the role of workplace characteristics in cognitive functioning and retirement. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Social Security Administration. He leads a CACHE demonstration project on extreme weather and mortality among people buried on Hart Island, New York’s public burial ground, and contributes to CACHE’s training program on heat exposure measurement and on disasters and aging. He received his PhD in Economics from Stony Brook University.

Dr. Jennifer Ailshire is Professor of Gerontology and Associate Dean of Research at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. She also co-directs the USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health and the USC AD/ADRD RCMAR. Ailshire’s research has demonstrated the importance of physical and social environments, and their interactions, in determining health and wellbeing in older adults. Her current lines of research include examinations of the role of air pollution and extreme heat in cognitive health and dementia risk. She is the architect of the Contextual Data Resource (CDR), which can be linked to longitudinal studies of aging in the U.S. to facilitate examination of socioenvironmental determinants of health and aging. Ailshire is currently expanding the CDR for researchers interested in understanding the role of the exposome in dementia and AD/ADRD risk.

Dr. Norma B. Coe is a Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.  She is the  Director of Research at Penn’s Leonard Davis Institute, Co-Director of the Population Aging Research Center (PARC), and Co-Director of the Get Experience in Aging Research Undergraduate Program (GEAR UP). She has a PhD in Economics, and her research focus is in health economics and public finance. Dr. Coe’s work strives to identify causal effects of policies that directly and indirectly impact health, human behavior, health care access, and health care utilization. A major focus of her research has been long-term care access, costs, insurance, and delivery, with a particular emphasis on people living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD).

Dr. Ruth Finkelstein, ScD, is the Rose Dobrof Executive Director of the Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging at Hunter College as well as a professor at the School of Urban Public Health. Dr. Finkelstein joined Hunter College in 2018 and is leading Brookdale in promoting opportunities for everyone to age as well as anyone can. Hunter College became the first major public institution in the U.S. to join the Global Network of Age Friendly Universities under her leadership. She has also begun grant-funded projects on home sharing, expanding access to meaningful arts engagement for older adults, creating policy focused on older workers, and developing a financial exploitation prevention strategy for financial institutions. Dr. Finkelstein has led numerous award-winning aging initiatives, including the Columbia Aging Center’s Age Smart Employer Awards; Exceeding Expectations, a digital narrative following New Yorkers over 80; and the New York Academy of Medicine’s Age-Friendly New York City, winner of the “Best Age Friendly Initiative in the World” prize in 2012. Dr. Finkelstein has won other recognition, including receipt of the 2019 Maggie Kuhn Award and being named a 2016 Influencer in Aging and one of City and State’s 2020 Outstanding Women. Before transitioning to aging, Dr. Finkelstein conducted policy-relevant HIV research (publishing 50+ papers), with particular focus on drug users and medication adherence. She has a doctorate in health policy from the Johns Hopkins school of public health, a MA in medical anthropology from Case Western Reserve, and a BA from the University of Michigan.

Dr. Manly’s research focuses on mechanisms of inequalities in cognitive aging and Alzheimer’s Disease. Her research team has partnered with Black and Latinx communities in New York City and around the United States to design and carry out investigations of structural and social forces across the lifecourse, such as educational opportunities, discrimination, and socioeconomic inequality, and how these factors relate to cognition and brain health later in life. She has authored over 300 peer-reviewed publications and 10 chapters. She was the 2014 recipient of the Tony Wong Diversity Award for Outstanding Mentorship, was the recipient of the Paul Satz-International Neuropsychological Society Career Mentoring Award in 2020, and was named the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research Senior Mentor of the Year in 2022. Dr. Manly was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021 and is a current member of the NIH Council of Councils.

Dr. Greg Husak is a Researcher and Principal Investigator at the Climate Hazards Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  His research looks at the intersection of drought and food insecurity, and how to anticipate food shortages through the use of agroclimatic data.  His recent research has developed different indices to flag drought events, quantifying the role of evaporative demand in drought, and supporting the development of new data products and tools to characterize the severity and extent of drought events across sub-Saharan Africa.  He works closely with the Famine Early Warning Systems Network supporting their efforts to mobilize humanitarian relief and other mitigation techniques.

Dr. Ortiz is the Assistant Professor of Climate Applications at the George Mason University Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Earth Sciences. There, he conducts research on the interactions of cities and the atmosphere under a changing climate, and how those interactions impact people and infrastructure. He also co-leads the Virginia Climate Center, which provides communities across the Commonwealth of Virginia with the climate data and tools to make them more resilience to weather hazards. He is also a member of the Fifth New York City Panel on Climate Change, and the IPCC. Before joining George Mason, Dr. Ortiz held an appointment at the Office of the US Secretary of Transportation, where he worked on climate policy, environmental justice, and infrastructure. He also completed a postdoctoral appointment at The New School, where he worked on resilience and urban climate modeling.  Dr. Ortiz earned his Ph.D. from the City College working on high resolution urban climate and energy use simulations for New York City.

Dr. Christian Braneon is a Research Affiliate at the City University of New York (CUNY) Institute for Demographic Research (CIDR) and also a Research Physical Scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) where he leads the Urban Pillar of the Impacts Group. He previously served as Co-Chair of the 4th New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC4) and as Co-Director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s inaugural Environmental Justice Academy for community leaders. Dr. Braneon was selected as one of four international recipients of the AXA Award for Climate Science in 2021 for his contributions to the understanding of climate change and related adaptation strategies. He holds a B.S. in applied physics from Morehouse College as well as B.S., M.S., and PhD degrees in civil engineering from Georgia Tech.

Dr. Landy Sánchez Peña is a professor at the Center for Demographic Urban and Environmental Studies. She holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a minor in geography. She works on population and environmental issues, as well as on various aspects of social inequality, such as spatial and gender disparities. Her current research topics revolve on the one hand, the intersections between climate change and urban households’ wellbeing. On the other hand, she analyzes inequalities between sexes and between generations in paid and unpaid work in Latin America. She participates in several editorial and academic committees on population and environmental research.

Dr. Kat Grace is a professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research fits squarely within the field of Population Geography and highlights the role of context in various aspects related to maternal and child health—primarily reproductive health and family planning decision-making. Using geographic training and quantitative background, Kathryn aims to build on past approaches and theories found in demography and public health. Kathryn strives to bring an alternative perspective to issues related to women’s health and development through the use of a quantitative, mixed-disciplinary approach to the examination of the way that individual, family, or household outcomes are conditioned by place, including both the culture and the natural environment. Kathryn spends a considerable amount of time exploring underlying theories of development, resource use and access, building on her own personal experience and observations from time spent in poor countries and communities.

Dr. Kris Karnauskas is a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and an Associate Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research examines climate variability and change and their impacts on human health and ecosystems, with particular interests in climate and health, extreme events, ocean and atmospheric dynamics, and environmental risk. His work integrates satellite observations, climate models, and other large-scale datasets to better understand climate-related risks and their implications for vulnerable populations. He received his PhD in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences from the University of Maryland–College Park.

Dr. Kai Chen is an environmental epidemiologist, climate health researcher, and Associate Professor at the Yale School of Public Health. Dr. Chen serves as the Faculty Director of the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health and the President-Elect of the GeoHealth Section at the American Geophysical Union. His research focuses on the intersection of climate change, air pollution, and human health. His work involves applying multidisciplinary approaches in climate and air pollution sciences, exposure assessment, and environmental epidemiology to investigate how climate change may impact human health. 

Dr. Melanie Gall is an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs where she co-directs the Center for Emergency Management and Homeland Security and manages the Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States (SHELDUS). She is a trained hazards geographer studying the interaction between natural hazards and society. Her expertise lies in risk metrics (e.g., disaster losses, indices, risk assessments), hazard mitigation and climate change adaptation planning as well as environmental modeling. The applied nature of hazards research allows her to work closely with emergency management agencies from local to federal levels. She has conducted post-disaster field work in Mozambique, Haiti, and in the United States. Her publications appeared in journals such as Nature Climate Change, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, and Natural Hazards Review. She is a certified floodplain manager and holds a doctorate from the University of South Carolina (Geography), a master’s degree from the University of Salzburg in Austria (Geography/GIS), and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Heidelberg in Germany (Geography).

Dr. Stephen Kritchevsky is the Toby R. Alligood, MD Endowed Professor in Geroscience at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine and Director of the Sticht Center for Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Prevention. He is an epidemiologist whose research focuses on nutrition, chronic disease, body composition, physical function, and healthy aging in older adults. Dr. Kritchevsky has led and contributed to numerous large-scale observational studies and clinical trials examining the functional health of older adults, including research on obesity, nutrition, exercise, and cognitive and physical health. He is also the Principal Investigator of the Wake Forest Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center and has authored hundreds of peer-reviewed publications.

Dr. Gina Rumore co-directs the NIA Demography & Economics of Aging Coordinating Center and co-leads the Minnesota Life Course Center’s Development Core. For most of her career, she has focused on mentoring early career scholars and research development in the fields of demography, population health, aging, and data infrastructure. She is expert in NIH grant proposal development and writing, having developed, implemented, and led a number of proposal and project development programs for scholars at the University of Minnesota and around the country. In addition to her work on research development, Rumore also dabbles in research on life course exposures and later life outcomes, with recent research articles appearing in PNAS, Science Advances, and Socius.

Tania Ochoa has a degree in Design and Visual Communication from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She has been working at El Colegio de México since 2014, where she directs the Interactive Design area of the Digital Education Coordination.