Dr. Peter Kalmus is a Data Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is the recipient of NASA’s Early Career Achievement Medal and has over 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications. Peter started his career in astrophysics. He obtained a B.Sc. in physics from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University, and led searches for gravitational waves from magnetars and supernovae on behalf of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration as a Caltech postdoc. He switched fields into climate science in 2012 due to his mounting climate concern, joining JPL as a postdoc in the now-discontinued Climate Physics group, where he studied cloud and atmospheric processes and supported the AIRS team. Since being hired permanently at JPL in 2016, Peter has increasingly moved his research focus into biodiversity and ecological forecasting. He is currently the PI or Science PI on 3 ROSES projects in these areas, and he leads JPL’s Biodiversity Club. In addition, Peter continues his atmospheric science work as the PI on a new ROSES project to study changes in the severe convective thermodynamic environment in the “tornado alley” region of the US. Outside of JPL, Peter is also a well-known climate activist, the author of an award-winning book, “Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution,” and a regular opinion contributor to The Guardian, the LA Times, and other publications.