Dr. Renata Poulton Kamakura is a National Academy of Sciences Science Policy Fellow working with GCOOS. They support ongoing projects related to marine heatwaves. Specifically, they help model the relationship between elevated sea surface temperatures and the climates in coastal and nearshore terrestrial (especially urban) communities.

Poulton Kamakura received their B.S. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from the University of Chicago in 2018. After graduating, they worked for the US Forest Service and a land trust on land conservation and restoration projects. They completed their Ph.D. in Ecology at Duke University in 2024 studying urban tree health and the implications for environmental justice in two U.S. cities. They also worked collaboratively on projects ranging from understanding the ecological impacts of climate change to the environmental justice implications of intensive agriculture in eastern North Carolina. They have experience working with remote sensing datasets, collecting field data, and supporting community outreach and collaborative science.