Data Science Institute

Kim Cobb is the Director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society at Brown University, and Professor in Environment and Society as well as Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences. In her climate research, she uses observations of past and present climate to advance our understanding of future climate change impacts, with a focus on climate extremes and coastal flood hazards. She received her B.A. from Yale University in 1996, and her Ph.D. in Oceanography from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in 2002. Prior to joining Brown in 2022, she served as Director of the Global Change Program at Georgia Tech, Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and ADVANCE Professor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. In her research, Kim has sailed on oceanographic cruises and led caving expeditions in the Borneo rainforests. She received a NSF CAREER Award, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and the Hans Oeschger Medal from the European Geosciences Union in 2019. She was elected as a AAAS Fellow in 2021, and was a Lead Author for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, released in 2021. As a mother to four, Kim is a strong advocate for women in science, and champions diversity and inclusion in all that she does. She is also devoted to the communication of climate change to the public through media appearances, public speaking, and social media channels, and enjoys frequent exchanges with policymakers about climate impacts and solutions.

How does your research, teaching, or other work relate to data or computational science?

I work with community science data in support of climate science and climate solutions applications. Sometimes this is "small data", but it must be in conversation with "big data" across several axes.