SCIPP Team

Rachel Riley

Barry Keim

Mark Shafer

Darrian Bertrand

Vincent Brown

Evan Chladny

Caylah Cruickshank

Charles Simson

Charles Simson is a Data Analyst for the Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program at Louisiana State University. He collaborates with his teammates at SCIPP and aids them in their research by working with climatic datasets to extract useful information and/or create related visualizations in the form of maps, plots, graphs, etc. He also builds tools and websites if the climate data and information need to be viewed and used by a larger audience. Additionally, he maintains and fixes bugs in the existing websites and tools held by the organization. He completed his Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science at Panimalar Engineering College from India and Masters of Science in Computer Science at Louisiana State University.

Derek Thompson

Ioana Cionea

Ioana Cionea, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Oklahoma. Her research focuses on the role of culture in communicative interactions, such as conflict situations. She is also interested in research methods and modeling of human behavior. 

Dr. Cionea works with SCIPP as a program evaluator, assessing and providing recommendations on various aspects of SCIPP's work with stakeholders, partners, and advisory committee members. 

Simone Domingue

Dr. Simone Domingue is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability at the University of Oklahoma. She recently completed a PhD in Sociology from the University of Colorado Boulder and holds an M.S. in Environmental Sciences from Louisiana State University. Dr. Domingue studies how vulnerability to hazards and disasters and social inequality intersect with the goal of supporting equitable and just resilience planning. Her dissertation critically examined Louisiana’s historic and current response to coastal land loss and climate change through the lens of environmental justice. She is currently working with a team of researchers to analyze and improve community capacity for equitable climate change adaptation planning in Gulf Coast States. 

Renee Edwards

Aimee Franklin

Renee McPherson

Lauren Mullenbach

Dr. Lauren Mullenbach is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability at OU. She is a scholar of urban environmental justice, focused on climate adaptation, green space development, gentrification, and wellbeing. Her current work focuses on equitable green space planning, city climate change planning, and homelessness.

Randy Peppler

Sascha Petersen

Sascha is the Director of Adaptation International and has been working specifically on climate change for more than 15 years. He has direct experience bridging the gaps between climate change science, policy, management, and action. He has partnered with and supported dozens of communities across the country as they work to build climate resilience. Sascha was a Lead Author for the Great Plains Region of the National Climate Assessment (2014), the Pacific Northwest Region of the 2018 National Climate Assessment, and the Southwest Region of the upcoming 2023 National Climate Assessment. He lives in Austin, TX, has a bachelor’s degree from Pomona College and a master’s degree focused on climate change science and policy from the University of Washington in Seattle. Before shifting his focus to climate change, he trained astronauts at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Debalina Sengupta

Dr. Debalina Sengupta is the Coastal Resilience Program Director for Texas Sea Grant at Texas A&M University. She leads and manages extension activities that focus on building resilient communities and economies along the Texas Gulf Coast. Dr. Sengupta works collaboratively with coastal communities to implement strategies that strengthen their resilience and sustainability through science and technology-based interventions. Her research interests span a plethora of topics fueled by her current and past experiences, including process systems engineering, sustainability analysis, life cycle assessment, technoeconomic analysis, environmental justice, resilient systems modeling for application areas such as energy transition, gas processing and utilization, sustainable manufacturing, eco-industrial parks, food energy water nexus and others.

Vincent Brown

Darrian Bertrand