David Atkinson has focused on arctic issues for his entire academic/professional career - his Bachelor, Master's and PhD all dealt with frozen ground, satellite remote sensing, and climate analyses, respectively, and he studied Russian language to gain access a wider array of research. Post doctoral work in 2002 introduced him to arctic coastal dynamics issues. He came to UAF in 2004 and currently holds a dual appointment as researcher with the International Arctic Research Center and Assistant Professor of Atmospheric Sciences with the College of Natural Science and Mathematics. At IARC/UAF he heads up several projects funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that focus on improving understanding of severe coastal storms, the mechanics of their interactions with the coast to cause flooding and erosion, the design of more effective communication tools for conveying information to the public, and a large multidisciplinary project that is examining the impacts of climate change and severe weather on coastal communities and linking that into forecast models to improve NOAA’s prediction capacity at the coastal zone. The geographic focus of this work is the SE Chukchi Sea/Northen Bering Sea region. He undertakes outreach activities in the communities, to get science into the hands of the public. He has students doing modeling and field instrumental work to support this project. This includes ocean wave observing activity with instruments placed into the Chukchi Sea and coastal HF Radar. Teck Cominco at Red Dog mine is a major industry partner in this.