UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences professor and College of the Environment Dean Emerita Lisa Graumlich has been awarded the 2022 Seattle Aquarium Silvia Earle Medal, which honors individuals whose leadership and lifetime accomplishments reflect and advance the mission of the Seattle Aquarium. The medal was presented as part of the aquarium’s annual Ocean Conservation Honors event.

Graumlich has devoted her career to studying the causes and impacts of climate change, with a special focus on using paleoecological records such as tree-rings to understand the magnitude of human impacts. She speaks frequently on climate change impacts and adaptation, and has testified on long-term climate variability before the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. She is currently president-elect of the American Geophysical Union, and served as the inaugural dean of the College of the Environment from 2010 to 2021.

“I want to be a part of a new way of being a scientist, of being a community with one foot in discovery-based science and the other foot in solution-based science — a community where those two things are melded together in a way they never were before,” Graumlich said in an interview with the Seattle Aquarium. “That’s why I am excited about partnering with the Aquarium. This is exactly what the Aquarium provides, and it’s the core of my vision.”

You can read the full Q&A on the Seattle Aquarium’s blog.