On Wednesday, January 9, 2019, Dr. Gina Eosco, a risk communication expert with Cherokee Nation Strategic Programs supporting NOAA’s Office of Weather & Air Quality (OWAQ), received The Award for Early-Career Professional Achievement for outstanding leadership at the American Meteorological Society (AMS) awards banquet in Phoenix.
The AMS early-career award recognizes individuals and organizations of the weather, water, and climate community who have demonstrated excellence in their profession, reflected a deep understanding of their area of expertise and its application, and demonstrated a high level of service to their community, society, and discipline.
Dr. Eosco’s dedication to embedding Social Science in the weather enterprise through weather risk communications and tireless efforts in addressing and overcoming obstacles to communicating risk has made her into an accomplished facilitator and social science champion.
“This award gave me the humble opportunity to reflect on my achievements. There are so many mentors, colleagues, friends, and family that helped me along the way,” said Dr. Gina Eosco. “With this comes a responsibility and the honor to mentor other early career professionals who may have similar ambitions.”
Over the past 15 years, Dr. Eosco has facilitated stakeholder engagement activities, conducted social science research, as well as translated science into policy documents. Her work at Eastern Research Group, Inc. and AMS led to current position at OWAQ where she is able to demystify the Readiness to Operations process between Social and Behavioral Science (SBS) researchers and the National Weather Service and understands the process of NOAA readiness levels functions for SBS research.
Dr. Gina Eosco earned her PhD in weather risk communication from Cornell University focusing on perceptions of risk and uncertainty to weather graphics shown during tornado media coverage. Much of her research focuses on visual effects in the risk communication domain with a specific focus on hurricane graphics such as hurricane track uncertainty and storm surge maps. She has an M.S. in Communication also from Cornell, and a B.S. in Environmental Science and Policy from the University of Maryland.
