“As soon as I saw the job posting, I said to myself, ‘This job is tailor-made for me.’ It was the right place, the right time and the right appointment.” And it was the offer she immediately accepted among the 60+ positions she applied for across the country.

She says, “I was born and raised to do interdisciplinary work. And more than anything, I’m so thrilled to be in a place where experts and world-class researchers are truly interested in raising awareness of environmental challenges through better communications.”

Christine’s research focuses on how people – across gender, political ideology, socioeconomic status and media habits – respond to risks and challenges related to climate change and extreme weather events. And she currently teaches a graduate course on communicating science and health risks to the public. “In addition to warning people about inherent dangers,” she says, “I want to enlighten them. The public has a right to know about the science that can make their lives better. And I want to help make sure those messages get out to everyone, including, and maybe especially, people living in vulnerable communities, both socioeconomically and environmentally.” 

Her interest in translating the complexities of major environmental health concerns so the general public can understand and relate to them goes back to her job as a research assistant one summer up in Maine. “There were three women graduate students who opened my eyes to the fact that communicating scientific principles and educating people about them could be a really gratifying career path for me. I wanted to follow in their footsteps and it made me think of academia as my calling for the first time.”

She continues, “I think we’ve realized, as a society, that social and physical scientists need to work together to solve some of the biggest challenges we have. As a social scientist, I may never know all the impacts of offshore windfarms on local fish populations. But I have a good knack for listening and can get beyond academic jargon to get to the heart of the matter and communicate this important information. I love when communication themes and ideas start to all come together and make sense, and I’m excited to be a bridge, a conduit, between physical and social sciences.”

With her husband and three cats now all situated on Long Island – which she says is also an ideal environment to study things like offshore windfarms – Christine says the sense of community at Stony Brook feels just right. “I have wonderful colleagues and mentors here. And, being a product of the public education system, I’m thrilled to work at a research-intensive  institution that’s helping transform the lives of students with equal access to amazing educational opportunities.”

One of her main challenges, she says, “is to find the time to do all I’m so excited to do here. The opportunities seem endless.”