Kim M. Cobb

Kim M. Cobb (born 1974) is an American climate scientist, professor of Environment and Society and of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University, and director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. Cobb was previously a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is particularly interested in oceanography, geochemistry and paleoclimate modeling.

Early life and education Kim Cobb was born in 1974 in Madison, Virginia, US. She grew up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In May, 2022, Brown University announced the appointment of Cobb as the director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society.

Awards and recognition In 2007, she won the NSF CAREER award and the Georgia Tech Education Partnership Award In 2019, Cobb was awarded the 2020 Hans Oeschger Medal by the European Geosciences Union In 2023, she was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union 2025 - Friend of the Planet award, National Center for Science Education

Policy and public engagement

Cobb sits on the American Association of Advancement of Science Climate Science Panel, the international CLIVAR Pacific Panel and the international PAGES-CLIVAR intersection panel. In this testimony, she described how the 2016 Pacific Ocean El Niño wiped out 90 percent of the corals in her study site, saying, "I had a front-row seat to the carnage." She underscored the severity and clear increases in the effects of climate change, noting that many scientists she talked with have been willing to collaborate with lawmakers on climate change.

Diversity At Georgia Tech, she is an ADVANCE Professor for "Institutional Diversity", part of the National Science Foundation's efforts to increase representation and advancement of women in science and engineering.