Fred H. Sklar has a Masters in Oceanography and a Ph.D. in Wetland Ecology. He is currently the Director of the Everglades Systems Assessment Section of the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) in West Palm Beach. Dr. Sklar has published over 100 articles on the hydrology, soil, plant, and animal processes associated with both the degradation and restoration of wetland and coastal ecosystems. He is an Associate Editor for the ESA journal: Frontiers in Ecology; an executive member of the steering committee for the Florida Coastal Ecosystem LTER Program and a RECOVER Executive Committee member for the Restoration of the Everglades. Past memberships include the National Environmental Advisory Board to the Chief of the USACE; the Science and Engineering Advisory Committee for the Louisiana Water Institute of the Gulf; and scientific coordinator for the North Inlet Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program at the University of South Carolina.

Michelle Afkhami is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Miami. She is an interdisciplinary scientist with expertise in the ecology, evolution, and genomics of microbiomes and is especially interested in the consequences of microbiomes for plant health and restoration/management practices in the Anthropocene. Since moving to South Florida in 2016, her lab has focused on local imperiled ecosystems, including Everglades tree islands, pine rocklands, mangrove forest, and the Florida scrub. Michelle has published over 50 peer-reviewed scientific articles in top journals, like Science, Nature Ecology and Evolution, and Ecology Letters, has raised ~$5 million in research funding, and has mentored 9 PhD students, 8 postdoctoral researcher, and >50 undergraduates in her lab. Michelle also is an Editor for the journal Ecology Letters, a member of the New Phytologist Advisory Board, the Director of the University of Miami Greenhouses, and a co-Founder and Director of BioReach, an outreach program that engages ~1,200 Miami-Dade elementary and middle school students and their families annually in hands on science education.

Prof. Andrew Baker is a coral biologist at the University of Miami whose research focuses on coral reefs and climate change. He directs the Coral Reef Futures Lab at UM’s Rosenstiel School, focusing on the development and testing of methods to increase coral resilience to a warming climate. Prof. Baker has authored some 140 peer-reviewed articles and is the lead investigator on a new NOAA-funded collaborative effort to expand next-generation interventions and approaches to enhance the climate resilience of Florida’s reefs. He is also the lead of X-REEFS, a DARPA-funded multidisciplinary team to design and test climate-resilient hybrid reefs in SE Florida as cost-effective solutions to protecting vulnerable coastlines. A Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation, Prof. Baker is also a former Fulbright Scholar, adjunct faculty at Columbia University, Fellow of the Explorers Club, and Inventor-in-Residence at the Frost Museum of Science From 2018-2019 he served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Interventions to Increase the Persistence and Resilience of Coral Reefs, and is currently a member of the Independent Risk Review Group for the Australian government’s Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program, focused on the Great Barrier Reef. In addition to his Ph.D. from the University of Miami (1999), Prof. Baker has a Bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences (Zoology) from Cambridge University.

Dr. Jennifer Jurado is responsible for leading climate resilience and environmental planning initiatives for Broward County, FL. Areas of particular focus include sea level rise adaptation, sustainable water resource management, shoreline protection, coastal resource conservation, and clean energy projects. She works extensively with internal and regional stakeholders to advance county-wide resilience planning informed by future conditions scenarios and fosters public-private partnerships key to large-scale initiatives. Current efforts involve advancement of a county-wide resilience plan focused on a infrastructure improvements, redevelopment strategies, and robust economic analyses. Dr. Jurado has been a participant in the four-county Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact since its formation in 2009. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Miami in Marine Biology and Fisheries.

Dr. Sparkle L. Malone obtained her PhD from the University of Alabama in 2014, where she studied the carbon fluxes in subtropical wetland ecosystems. She then worked for the USDA Forest Service at Rocky Mountain Research Station from 2014-2017 and at Florida International University (FIU) from 2017- 2022. At FIU, she established the Malone Disturbance Ecology lab. Her primary research focused on improving our understanding of how climate and disturbance regimes influence spatial and temporal variability in ecosystem structure and function. She explores questions related to ecosystem conditions, sustainability, and vulnerability to climate extremes using remote sensing and eddy covariance. In the fall of 2022, she joined the Yale School of the Environment (YSE) and the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture (YCNCC).

Dr. Michael Osland is a Research Ecologist at the USGS Wetland & Aquatic Research Center in Lafayette, Louisiana. He has a Ph.D. in Ecology from Duke University and a B.A. in Biology from Willamette University. He was also a Peace Corps Volunteer in El Salvador and a Fulbright Fellow in Costa Rica. Much of his research examines the effects of climate change and sea-level rise on coastal wetlands, including the implications for ecological conservation and restoration.