William Easterling

In this talk, Easterling will describe how NSF, together with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), are the primary US federal agencies promoting fundamental, curiosity-driven research. Encouragement by the research community, the public and its elected leaders has led to the expansion of the NSF mission to support research that not only contributes fundamental new knowledge but that also hastens scientific advances and/or delivers information that addresses critical societal needs such as food, energy and water security. He will discuss NSF’s Big Ideas, such as convergence science, with emphasis on new initiatives in the Arctic and cyber-science and engineering. New initiatives being developed in the Geosciences Directorate, such as Coastlines and People (CoPe) will also be presented. The talk concludes with examples of exciting new research findings that demonstrate that NSF must continue to maintain fundamental, curiosity-driven research but that that research is in balance with interdisciplinary, convergence research.

William Easterling was appointed to Assistant Director of Geosciences at the National Science Foundation in June, 2017. He is an internationally recognized expert on how climate change likely will affect the Earth’s food supply. He has testified before Congress, given invited briefings to committees and sub-committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, delivered numerous invited presentation and keynote speeches, and authored more than 80 refereed scientific publications. He has chaired or served on various international and national committees, including those of the United Nations, National Research Council, National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy and many other federal agencies.

There will be two identical sessions for this event. Choose the one more convenient to you. Register below for 2:15 - 3:15 p.m. and for the other from 3:15 - 4:15 p.m. register here.