Jay Benforado is the Chief Innovation Officer in EPA’s Office of Research and Development. Jay is a founding co-chair of the Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science, helping to guide it from a small informal group to an influential network of over 400 members representing 60 agencies.  Jay’s efforts to establish citizen science, innovation project competitions, and voluntary partnerships help EPA, State, Tribal and local environmental agencies prepare for the challenges of a rapidly-changing world.  Previous positions at EPA include Director of the National Center for Environmental Innovation and Deputy Associate Administrator for Policy, Economics and Innovation in the EPA Administrator’s Office. 

Erick Burres is a Senior Environmental Scientist Specialist with California’s State Water Resources Control Board where he leads the Clean Water Team. Mr. Burres has a BS in Zoology and a MPA in Public Policy and Administration. He has worked on wildlife conservation, fisheries and watershed stewardship projects since the late 1980’s and has been with the Clean Water Team since 2000.

Dr. Kate Fickas earned her Ph.D. at OSU coming up with novel ways to use dense time series analysis of satellite imagery to track spatio-temporal dynamics of wetlands in Oregon back to 1985. During her Ph.D., she worked closely with researchers at Google and NASA in order to develop and process her satellite-based algorithms. After her Ph.D. in 2018, Kate went on to complete a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst researching how to use drones to capture changes in salt marsh wetlands on the East Coast. Currently, Kate is the position of Harmful Algal Bloom Program coordinator and aquatic ecologist at the Utah Division of Water Quality in the Department of Environmental Quality. In her time at DWQ she has worked to increase communication, collaboration, and trust between DWQ and Utah’s LHDs. Kate also continues to work with NASA on making Utah a sentinel state for emerging remote sensing technology in the use of observing HABs from satellites.

Ed is the Branch Chief of Water Quality Standards and Total Maximum Daily Loads in the Water Quality Division at the District of Columbia’s Department of Energy & Environment (DOEE). Prior to DOEE, Ed was a program officer with the Water Science and Technology Board at the National Academies of Sciences. There he led consensus-based studies on water resource management. Ed was also a supervising environmental scientist with the St. Johns River Water Management District in Florida where he managed an 800-acre constructed wetland. Ed holds PhD and MSc degrees in environmental resource management from University College Dublin in Ireland and a BSc degree in biology from Bangor University in Wales.

Dr. Jayme Smith is a scientist at Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRP), a water quality research institute in Costa Mesa, CA. Dr. Smith specializes in the ecology of harmful algal blooms (HABs) and is interested in determining biological, chemical, and physical conditions that related to the development of HABs in both marine and freshwater systems. She is also interested in the improvement and development of HAB monitoring programs and tools in aquatic systems in California. Dr. Smith earned a B.S. in Biology from Vanguard University in 2009 and a Ph.D. in Biology 2018 from University of Southern California.

Mara Dias is the Water Quality Manager for the Surfrider Foundation, an international, grass-roots, environmental NGO. She received her B. S. in marine biology from Southampton College in New York and her M. S. in Environmental Policy from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. She currently leads the Surfrider Foundation’s Clean Water Initiative which includes managing their volunteer-run beach water testing program, the Blue Water Task Force, and working on advocacy campaigns to improve water quality monitoring and public health protection programs at beaches across the U. S. She also assists Surfrider chapters in addressing their local water quality concerns by building community awareness and partnering with local agencies to identify and address sources of beach pollution.

Dr. Timothy Davis is the Patrick L. & Debra (Scheetz) Ryan Endowed Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Director of the Center for Great Lakes and Watershed Studies (CGLWS) at Bowling Green State University (BGSU).  Over the past 15 years, Dr. Davis has studied the ecology of harmful algal blooms (HABs) in marine, estuarine, and freshwater environments.  Dr. Davis is a Co-Chair of the National HAB Committee (NHC), is a member of the GlobalHAB Scientific Steering Committee and a member of the US EPA Board of Scientific Counselors, serving on the safe and sustainable water resources subcommittee.