Fellowship Year: Meredith Richardson is a 2020 Sea Grant Knauss Fellow placed in the Office of the Chief Data Officer within the U.S. Dept of Commerce. Within this role, she performs two functions: Executive Secretary for the Commerce Data Governance Board, and Bureau Liaison to the Chief Data Officer. In these roles, Meredith consistently communicates with Bureau CIOs and CDOs, interagency working groups, and the NOAA Data Program.

Background: Meredith is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Water Resources Engineering & Science Program of the Civil Engineering Dept at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), hoping to graduate in December 2020. Her PhD research focuses on the self-organization of terrestrial ecosystem vegetation and modeling human-induced impacts to ecosystem vegetation structure and stability. Meredith holds a M.S. from UIUC (2016) and a B.S. from North Carolina State University (NCSU) (2014), both in Civil Engineering. In her 4 years at NCSU, Meredith was a Division I scholarship student-athlete in volleyball and received a Minor in Vocal Performance. Throughout graduate school, she has been highly involved in STEM and women's advocacy through coaching young athletes and taking on leadership roles within the Society of Women Engineers, the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering & Research, and the American Geophysical Union.