Passionate about integrating numbers and lived experience - meet Jake Hawes

In January 2025, UW is welcoming Jason "Jake" Hawes as Assistant Professor at the School of Computing and Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources. Jake is part of CLIMES, which is one of the three sustainable outcomes of WyACT together with the Socio-Environmental Systems Observatory Network SEASoN and the Center for Climate, Water, and People. CLIMES, short for CoLaborative for Intersectoral Modeling of Earth Systems, combines disciplines like atmospheric science, economics, ecosystem science and management, and computer science to provide projections of regionally relevant environmental futures for Wyoming and beyond. Current work in CLIMES includes impacts of wildfire smoke and tourism, especially in National Parks.

Jake Hawes embodies the interdisciplinarity of the WyACT project in his career: He obtained a BS in Environmental and Ecological Engineering and then realized that the type of environmental issues he was interested in were more of a social challenge than an engineering problem, so for his graduate studies he obtained an MS in Natural Resources Social Science. Subsequently, he brought both areas together in his PhD in Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan in 2024. He wants to continue working at the intersection of computing with social and spatial science to form a more complete picture that consists of numbers as well as lived experience. He has done researched on water-related topics – central to WyACT – since his undergraduate years.

Prior to arriving at Wyoming, Jake worked with the Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience division at Idaho National Laboratory, and hopes to forge a collaboration. In addition to his research, Jake is looking forward to teaching classes in both schools.