Bio
I work at the intersection of climate resilience and climate solutions to enhance the life-sustainment and human security of our planet. I invest in early stage ocean climate tech startups at Propeller Ventures, and advise on climate risk for the financial and other sectors.
I am a climate scientist specialized in our oceans and atmosphere and how they interact using international fieldwork and AI/ML with Earth System Models to predict patterns. My background is in nonlinear dynamics and complex systems. I led early product development at a startup, Jupiter, focused on climate perils. I have held leadership roles across academia, non-profit, government, private sector, and scientific societies.
Climate
· Adjunct Research Scientist at Columbia’s Earth Institute integrating multidisciplinary (oceanography, hydrology, meteorology, land surface) modeling and field studies focused on urban environments and islands
· Fulbright Visiting Professor in Environmental Sciences, University of the Philippines
· Member of U.S. Climate Security Roundtable
· Elected to the leadership councils of the American Meteorological Society and The Oceanography Society, and co-chaired each scientific society’s largest meetings
· Advisor to Department of Energy’s Environmental & Climate Sciences on R&D and innovation
Tech
· Science advisor to Carbon to Sea, accelerating research in marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) tech
· Former Director of Products & Climate Strategist at Jupiter Intelligence, a climate risk analytics start-up
· Early physical climate risk expert for Open Source-Climate
· Previously led DHS National Maritime Security Center of Excellence while Professor of Ocean Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology
· 2020-2022 IBM Call for Code eminent judge
Finance
· Founding Partner with Propeller Ventures, an early-stage ocean climate tech venture fund
· Advisory Committee for Sustainability and Climate Risk of the Global Association of Risk Professionals
· Board Member of the Waterfront Alliance and Resilience Rising, crafting and leading climate adaptation, justice and financing for cities in the northeast and globally
· Angel investor in ocean tech (via Investable Oceans) and LP in several notable climate tech funds
· Board Member & Treasurer of Ocean Visions, advancing tech & nature-based solutions for ocean-climate restoration
Currently a founding Partner and Chief Scientist at ocean climate tech VC fund Propeller Ventures, she invests in companies and leads initiatives with top ocean/atmosphere R&D universities and institutions to develop pioneering S&T to solve the climate crisis. Dr. Pullen was most recently the Climate Strategist (previously Director of Product) at Jupiter Intelligence, a start-up delivering climate impact and risk analytics using AI/ML and cloud computing, and is an adjunct research scientist at Columbia’s Climate School. She was previously Associate Professor in Civil, Environmental, and Ocean Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology where she organized field studies globally to improve our understanding and prediction of the Earth system. She is a Fellow of the Explorers Club for her fieldwork on tropical extreme weather and marine aerosol-cloud interactions, and is a past science fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.
Dr. Pullen's scientific expertise spans climate, weather and water with a focus on coastal flooding, heatwaves and drought and their impacts. Dr. Pullen’s research has contributed to the understanding and development of resilience and sustainability in coastal environments, and the enhancement of Earth System Models on weather, subseasonal-to-seasonal, and climate timescales.
She was earlier Director of the DHS-funded National Center for Maritime Security where she created programs in environmental and nuclear security and led applied research projects and commercialization of ocean and atmosphere tech across government labs, universities, the Coast Guard, and Customs and Border Protection. Her research has improved the fidelity of airborne chemical/biological/radiological/nuclear (CBRN) transport and dispersion models, particularly in coastal and urban areas. At the Naval Research Laboratory, she pioneered the coupling of high-res models of the ocean and atmosphere for operational prediction globally and advanced air/sea ensemble prediction.
Dr. Pullen was elected to the Council and Executive Committee (2019-2022) of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and was previously the elected physical oceanography Councilor for The Oceanography Society (2015-2018). Dr. Pullen was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) committee that reviewed the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4): Impacts and the NAS committees on Earth System Prediction (2014-2016) and Sustaining Ocean Observations (2020). She was a chapter co-author of the 2015 New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC2) report. She currently serves on the Climate Security Roundtable, a JASON-like group for the Intelligence Community.
She has taught graduate-level Dynamic Meteorology, Fluid Dynamics, and Oceanography and originated new graduate courses in Nuclear Security and also Tropical Meteorology as a Fulbright Visiting professor at the University of the Philippines (2018). She has advised and graduated master’s and Ph.D. students who work in academia, weather services, data science and renewable energy.
Dr. Pullen has served on program committees of the AMS Coastal Environments (chair), Gordon Research Conference on Coastal Ocean Modeling, International Waterside Security Conference, and co-chaired the Ocean Sciences Meeting (2010), the climate-themed AMS meeting (2024) and the Maritime Risk Symposium (2015). She led the first international workshop on Coastal Hydrology and Surface Processes linked to Air/Sea Modeling in Madeira.
Dr. Pullen holds a Ph.D. in physical oceanography from Oregon State University, a postdoc in meteorology, and a master’s degree in applied mathematics from the University of Arizona. At Macalester College, she majored in physics and math. She was the first undergraduate intern at the Santa Fe Institute and later worked at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory.