Dr. Shafer is the Associate State Climatologist with the Oklahoma Climatological Survey (OCS) and Assistant Professor in the University of Oklahoma’s Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability. He established and is the University of Oklahoma lead for the Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program (SCIPP), a NOAA RISA Team at The University of Oklahoma and Louisiana State University. Dr. Shafer was formerly Chair of the AMS Board on Societal Impacts and program co-chair for the Symposium on Policy and Socio-Economic Research. He serves on the NIDIS Implementation Team and was a coordinating lead author for the Great Plains Chapter of the 2013 National Climate Assessment. His research focuses on communication between the scientific community and policy makers, particularly in managing societal response to extreme events. Primary areas of research include the influence of scientific and technical information on policy outcomes and institutional factors that can affect the flow of information.