Action Team Members

Dr. Jennifer Francis (Action Team Co-Chair) earned a B.S. in Meteorology from San Jose State University in 1988 and a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Washington in 1994. As a professor at Rutgers University since 1994, she has taught courses in satellite remote sensing and climate-change issues, and also co-founded and co-directed the Rutgers Climate and Environmental Change Initiative. Presently she is a Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center and studies Arctic climate change and Arctic-global climate linkages. Dr. Francis’ research has focused specifically on the connection between the rapidly warming Arctic and a weakened jet stream. She has served on numerous national boards, committees, and councils, including for NSF, NASA, the National Academies, and the American Meteorological Society. She and her husband circumnavigated the world in a sailboat from 1980-1985, including Cape Horn and the Arctic, during which her interest in weather and the Arctic began. Email: jfrancis [at] whrc.org

Dr. Henry P. Huntington (Action Team Co-Chair) earned his bachelor’s degree in English at Princeton University and his master’s and doctorate in Polar Studies at the University of Cambridge. He lives with his wife and two sons in Eagle River, Alaska, where he works as an independent researcher and on Arctic Ocean conservation for the Pew Charitable Trusts. His first encounter with sea ice took place at age 5, when he slipped on a floe in Stonybrook Harbor, New York, resulting in five stitches above his left eye. He recovered well enough to take an interest in the Arctic and its inhabitants. He has made long trips in the Arctic by dog team, open boat, and snowmobile. Huntington’s research activities include reviewing the regulation of subsistence hunting in northern Alaska, documenting traditional ecological knowledge of beluga whales and bowhead whales, examining Iñupiat Eskimo and Inuit knowledge and use of sea ice, and assessing the impacts of climate change on Arctic communities and Arctic marine mammals. Huntington has been involved in a number of international research programs, such as the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, the Program for the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna, and the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. He was co-chair of the National Academy of Sciences committee on emerging research questions in the Arctic and a member of the Council of Canadian Academies panel on the state of knowledge of food security in the North. Huntington has written many academic and popular articles, as well as two books. Email: hph [at] alaska.net

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller (Action Team Staff: Facilitator/Communicator) earned his doctorate in 2011 from the University of Alaska Fairbanks where he combined geophysical monitoring with local knowledge to study how Iñupiat communities use and rely on a changing sea-ice environment. Matthew joined Rutgers University in summer 2015 to support the Sea Ice Action Team, however, is based at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, CO. Previously, Matthew was a PACE (Postdocs Advancing Climate Expertise) Fellow at NSIDC where he collaborated with Alaska’s North Slope Borough to investigate the impacts of Arctic sea ice loss on bowhead whales. With long-held interests in science policy, he has served as a Science Policy Fellow at the National Academies’ Polar Research Board (2005), a project manager at the Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S. (2006), and a AAAS Science Policy Fellow at the U.S. Agency for International Development (2013-2015). Originally from Trout Run, Pennsylvania, Matthew traces his appreciation for the Arctic back to his early years fishing small mountain streams with his father, grandfather, and brother. Email: druckenmiller [at] nsidc.org

Sea Ice Action Team Members