Dr. Keith Jennings will join ̽̽’s Water Resources Institute (WRI) in November 2024. Dr. Jennings will serve as the Director of Research, aiming to develop the institute in the areas of water prediction, water data science, risk communication, climate resiliency planning, and solutions development.
“We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Jennings to ̽̽ as we embark upon this ambitious program of growing ̽̽’s research portfolio, reputation, and impact in water resources,” said Beverley Wemple, faculty director of the WRI.
Dr. Jennings is no stranger to Vermont, having completed his B.S. in Environmental Science at ̽̽. Most recently, he was Lead Hydrologist at Lynker, a water science and engineering company based in Boulder, Colorado, and served as Technical Director of the NextGen Formulation Team for the National Water Model on contract with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He comes to ̽̽ with a background in research, funding acquisition, and personnel management.
At Lynker, Dr. Jennings and his collaborators delivered nearly $17 million to the company in a diversified combination of contracts and grants, including a $7 million contract with the NOAA National Weather Service Office of Water Prediction (OWP). His past projects comprise a varied portfolio of funding, coming from small grants with municipalities, a non-profit client, a water utility, and mid-size federal research grants with NASA and the NOAA Climate Program Office.
His research has focused on water resources modeling, developing and deploying models and remote sensing algorithms for algal bloom monitoring, agricultural productivity, stream temperature, and wildfire. He has used physics-based, conceptual, statistical, and machine learning methods in several programming languages, employing a variety of data sources and formats. Dr. Jennings has authored several manuscripts for high-profile journals, such as Nature Communications and Water Resources Research, and has presented at a variety of conferences, including the AGU Fall Meeting, the AMS Annual Conference, and the Western Snow Conference, among others.
“It’s been 18 years since I was last a Catamount. What an honor it is to come back to ̽̽ and contribute to a growing, impactful research endeavor like the Water Resources Institute,” said Dr. Jennings. “I’m excited to get into Farrell Hall, to start making connections, and to see how we can unify our work to benefit not only Vermonters, but all those who need better information about water resources.”
As Director of Research at the Water Resources Institute, Dr. Jennings will contribute to growing and sustaining the Institute’s research enterprise through the development of new initiatives, leadership of complex multi-investigator research projects, overseeing research teams, and ensuring the delivery of high-quality research products. His goal is to not only advance basic understanding of water resources, but to deliver actionable information to the communities that need it.
Jennings understands that water resources research is not often accessible to those who need it the most, stating that the work “suffers from inequitable outcomes.” Therefore, as the WRI Director of Research, he emphasizes that his goals are “to prioritize sustainable funding, the building and maintenance of a diverse team, the acceleration of state-of-the-field research, and the straightforward communication of knowledge to external stakeholders.”
Dr. Jennings earned his Ph.D. in Geography from University of Colorado Boulder in 2018 with a focus on modeling climate change impacts on snow cover, conducting his dissertation research on climatic and energy balance controls on snow accumulation and melt in mountain snowpacks. He then served as a post-doctoral scholar at the Desert Research Institute & University of Nevada, where he co-developed a NASA citizen science project to relate ground observations to satellite data. He has a M.S. in Water Resources Science from Oregon State University.