Jason Curole, Ph.D., Vice President for Applied Research, has over two decades of experience in numerous areas, including project management, data science, ecological monitoring, business intelligence, financial modeling, and large-scale coastal restoration.

Born and raised in New Orleans, Jason’s work includes managing large-scale Louisiana coastal restoration projects with total budgets ranging from $4 to $242 million, developing innovative and data-driven methods for evaluating the success of restoration projects, and extensive experience in managing projects from development to construction. He is skilled in handling both scientific and financial data and extracting novel insights from either.

While at the Institute, Jason has pioneered work in several disciplines, including: SmartPort, a project using crowd-sourced data and AI/ML to predict bathymetry which resulted in the Institute’s first patent; the digital transformation of project management, finance, and business intelligence through automation, custom analytics, and tailored dashboards; founding the Project Management Office and organically building the team to seven staff, recruiting several highly-qualified senior project managers to the Institute; co-leading the effort to bring an eDNA/metagenomics expert to the Institute to gain a better understanding of the microbial populations along Louisiana’s coast.

Jason is an innovative thinker and proven leader with a dynamic skill-set and has been called within the Institute a “swiss army knife unicorn.”