Today, our scientific community finds itself at an inflection point that will have far-reaching consequences for society well into the future. Positioning ourselves to continue advancing our science for the benefit of society will be determined by how we navigate the challenges and opportunities of these times: rapid advances in technology, shifts in workforce norms and expectations, the continued erosion of public trust in science, and environmental threats that are impacting communities around the globe.  

To address these challenges, we as a community need to be more intentional about what we study and how we study it, so that our scientific efforts are guided by the needs of communities. Farmers, infrastructure planners, community leaders, and everyday people are contending with increasingly frequent and extreme natural disasters, and are looking for information that will keep them and their livelihoods safe. We have a responsibility to be intentional about scaling up science guided by the goal of societal resilience.

The technological revolution we’re seeing, with rapid advances in high performance computing and artificial intelligence, presents extraordinary opportunities for our science. As we explore these opportunities, it’s critical that we’re careful to do so in a way that emphasizes reproducibility, scalability, broad accessibility, and responsibility. 

As the next-generation workforce enters the field, we need to consider a new definition of success: one that values a wider range of contributions. We need to reward the contributions that make teams successful as much as we reward individual excellence.

Finally, it’s important that we work to expand trust with the public. We need to continue to explore, at scale, ways to inform taxpayers that our research — fundamental and applied — adds value to their lives.

If entrusted with the honor of serving on the AMS Council, I will work enthusiastically and collaboratively to advance these aspirations.

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Everette Joseph joined NSF NCAR as director in 2019. In this role, he has provided leadership of NCAR’s strategic direction, reinforcing NCAR’s mission of advancing Earth system science in the research community with an emphasis on actionable science. Prior to his time at NCAR, he was director of the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at the University at Albany, State University of New York, where he co-led the New York State Mesonet for advanced weather detection and the New York State Center of Excellence for the Weather Enterprise.

He has served as principal or co-principal investigator on research grants totaling over $200 million from agencies including NSF, NOAA, NASA, and the Army High Performance Computing Research Center.

Joseph joined the UCAR Board of Trustees in 2011, where he was elected vice chair in 2015 and chair in 2017. He has served as a member of the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM). He has also served on the Steering Committee of the NASEM Decadal Survey for Earth Science and Applications from space; the NOAA Science Advisory Board; and the American Meteorological Society Commission on the Weather, Water and Climate Enterprise.

Previously, at Howard University, Joseph was a full professor, director of the Program in Atmospheric Sciences, and deputy director of the NOAA Center for Atmospheric Science.  Joseph played a key role in expanding the atmospheric science program at Howard and led the development of the Beltsville Center for Climate Observations – a major field program with university, government, and industry partners improving satellite atmospheric monitoring and weather, climate, and air quality forecasting over complex terrain — which he directed.

Joseph has supervised close to 20 Ph.D. students and mentored numerous undergraduate students on topics ranging from radiative transfer and remote sensing of clouds and aerosols to boundary layer meteorology and air quality. He has contributed to over 70 referred publications and numerous invited presentations and conference papers as author or co-author.  

He earned his Ph.D. in physics with an emphasis on atmospheric science from the University at Albany. He is a fellow of the AMS.