Bio
I work at the intersection of resilience and solutions to enhance the life-sustainment and security of our home planet. I invest in climate tech startups, and advise on climate and nature risk for the financial and other sectors.
I am an ocean and atmosphere scientist experienced in fieldwork, AI/ML, and earth system models for predicting future patterns. My background is in nonlinear dynamics and complex systems.
I was on the founding team of a VC fund for oceans and led early product development of extreme event perils at a climate risk startup after leaving an engineering professorship.
Finance
· Former Founding Partner & Chief Scientist of Propeller Ventures, an early-stage ocean climate tech VC fund
· Board Member & Treasurer of Ocean Visions, advancing tech & nature-based solutions for ocean-climate restoration
· Advisory Committee for Sustainability and Climate Risk of the Global Association of Risk Professionals
· Angel investor (satellite, water, oceans) and LP in several notable climate tech funds
· Advisor to Cerulean Ventures (a nature tech VC fund) & Science Advisor to Propeller
Earth System
· Fulbright Visiting Professor in Environmental Sciences, University of the Philippines
· Member of U.S. Climate Security Roundtable
· Leadership councils of the American Meteorological Society and The Oceanography Society & co-chaired each scientific society’s largest meetings
· Former Professor of Civil, Environmental, and Ocean Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology & Adjunct Research Scientist at Columbia’s Earth Institute
· Appointments at the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven Los Alamos labs
Tech
· Science advisor to Carbon to Sea, accelerating work in marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) tech
· Former Director of Products & Climate Strategist at Jupiter Intelligence, a climate risk analytics start-up
· Early physical climate risk expert for Open Source-Climate
· Former Director of Department of Homeland Security’s National Maritime Security Center
· 2020-2022 IBM Call for Code eminent judge along with Mark Cuban and Bill Clinton
Dr. Julie Pullen was a founding Partner and Chief Scientist at VC fund Propeller Ventures, investing in early-stage companies and leading initiatives with ocean institutions to advance pioneering science and technology. Dr. Pullen was on the leadership team at Jupiter Intelligence, a start-up delivering climate risk analytics using AI/ML and cloud computing, and was an adjunct research scientist at Columbia’s Earth Institute. She was previously Associate Professor in Civil, Environmental, and Ocean Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology where she organized field studies globally to improve our understanding and prediction of the earth system. She is a Fellow of the Explorers Club for her fieldwork on tropical extreme weather and marine aerosol-cloud interactions and is a past science fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.
She was earlier Director of the DHS-funded National Center for Maritime Security, where she created programs in environmental and nuclear security and led applied research projects and commercialization of ocean and atmosphere tech across government labs, universities, the Coast Guard, and Customs and Border Protection. Her research has improved the fidelity of airborne chemical/biological/radiological/nuclear (CBRN) transport and dispersion models, particularly in coastal and urban areas. At the Naval Research Laboratory, she pioneered the coupling of high-resolution models of the ocean and atmosphere for operational prediction globally.
Dr. Pullen was elected to the Council and Executive Committee (2019-2022) of the American Meteorological Society and was previously the elected physical oceanography Councilor for The Oceanography Society (2015-2018). Dr. Pullen peer-reviewed the Fourth and Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA4, NCA5) and served on National Academy of Sciences committees on Earth System Prediction (2014-2016) and Sustaining Ocean Observations (2020). She was a chapter co-author of the 2015 New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC2) report. She is currently a member of the U.S. Climate Security Roundtable.
She has taught graduate-level Dynamic Meteorology, Fluid Dynamics, and Oceanography and originated new graduate courses in Nuclear Security and also Tropical Meteorology as a Fulbright Visiting professor at the University of the Philippines (2018). She has advised and graduated master’s and Ph.D. students who work in academia, weather services, data science, and renewable energy.
Dr. Pullen holds a Ph.D. in physical oceanography from Oregon State University and a master’s degree in applied mathematics/nonlinear dynamics from the University of Arizona. She majored in physics and math at Macalester College. The first undergraduate intern at the Santa Fe Institute, she later worked at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory.