Geoffrey Plumlee, Ph.D.

Dr. Geoff Plumlee has had a nearly 42-year career in public service with the USGS, starting as a graduate student employee in 1983 and retiring in late 2024 as USGS Chief Scientist. In his five years as USGS Chief Scientist and Senior Science Advisor to the USGS Director, Geoff provided strategic scientific vision and counsel to the USGS Director, Executive Leadership Team, and workforce on transdisciplinary USGS earth-system science opportunities, activities, and partnerships. He served as an executive science liaison for USGS and Department of the Interior with other Federal agencies, promoted USGS science to support diplomacy and security, helped ensure rigorous USGS science practices and peer review, and was an executive champion for the USGS science / technical workforce. From 2016 to early 2020, Geoff was the USGS Associate Director for Environmental Health, where he led USGS research at the intersection of environment and health.  As Acting Associate Director for Energy and Mineral Resources in 2018, he helped envision and lead early planning of the USGS Earth Mapping Resources Initiative.  Geoff spent most of his USGS career from 1983 to 2016 as a research geologist and environmental geochemist—he helped initiate, lead, and/or participate in transdisciplinary earth-system research to inform decision making on topics related to mineral resources, the natural and built environments, natural and human-caused disasters, and the health of humans and other organisms. In a rotational assignment as a USGS Center Director and Mineral Resources Program Council member from early 1996 to late 2000, Geoff helped lead USGS mineral resource science and its applications to natural resources, the environment, and natural hazards.  

Geoff continues his public service in retirement as the USGS Chief Scientist Emeritus, a volunteer position. He brings his earth-system science expertise to USGS projects that help inform decision making on topics such as mineral resources, disasters, public health, and security. 

Dr. Plumlee’s success as a researcher, Center Director, and USGS Chief Scientist directly resulted from his ability to seek out and establish needed transdisciplinary research collaborations with colleagues from across the USGS and many external partners, including scientists from a broad range of earth, biological, physical, health, social, emergency response, and engineering science disciplines. In addition to his work within the United States, Geoff worked with scientists, diplomats, decision makers, and local communities on mineral resource, environmental health, and natural hazards projects in other countries such as the Philippines, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Poland. As an adjunct faculty member for 9 years with the University of Colorado School of Public Health, Geoff helped educate over 100 graduate students about how earth-system processes may influence public health.