The Computing Community Consortium would like to congratulate the Vice Chair of the CCC, Dr. Nadya Bliss, on her appointment to the National Academies’ Climate Security Roundtable. 

In January of 2021, Congress voted to direct the National Academies to establish the Climate Security Roundtable, which will provide expert support to the federal Climate Security Advisory Council (CSAC) in foreseeing and preventing climate security crises from escalating into issues of national security. This roundtable will facilitate conversations and collaboration surrounding a number of topics, including dissemination of relevant climate change data and information, discussion of understudied risks associated with climate change, improvements to existing climate change models and simulations, and any other capabilities or developments considered essential by the CSAC. The Climate Security Roundtable is comprised of experts in academia, industry, and civil society, and will operate through September of 2025.

To Dr. Bliss, who serves as the executive director of Arizona State University’s Global Security Initiative, the goals of the Climate Security Roundtable are of the utmost importance. When asked about her passion for climate change mitigation, Dr. Bliss said,

“The sheer urgency and importance of the topic means everyone should be passionate about it to some degree. For me specifically though, I have spent much of my career thinking about how research and engineering can help address, or at least mitigate the negative consequences of some of the world’s ‘wicked problems’ as defined by Webber and Rittel in 1970, and there is no problem more complex, more multi-faceted, or more impactful than climate change.”

Dr. Bliss intends to use her expertise in technology research and development with the national defense and security communities to contribute to instrumental discussions and to offer insight on how computing can help anticipate and shape responses to climate emergencies. Specifically, Dr. Bliss hopes to focus on “resiliency of systems and how to plan for second-order, third-order and even fourth-order consequences of climate-related emergencies.”

During her time with the CCC, Dr. Bliss has tackled the topic of climate change by co-authoring a whitepaper, titled Computing Research for the Climate Crisis, which outlines technical recommendations of areas where computing research can play an important role in addressing climate change. This white paper was the basis for the upcoming CCC and National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored Convergence Accelerator workshop on Building Resilience to Climate Driven Extreme Events with Computing Innovations. 

We are very much looking forward to seeing the accomplishments of the NASEM Climate Security Roundtable; Please join us in congratulating Dr. Bliss on her appointment!