Tyson Vaughan
Tyson Vaughan is a civil works and water resources policy analyst and a subject matter expert in the social dimensions of disaster recovery and risk reduction, community resilience, and environmental collaboration and public engagement. As a Sociologist at the Institute for Water Resources (IWR) and the Collaboration & Public Participation Center of Expertise (CPCX), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), he works to improve federal policy, engage the public, and enhance the resilience of American communities facing environmental risks.
Tyson represents the Corps to the Urban Waters Federal Partnership national workgroup. He has represented the Corps at the quarterly Environmental Collaboration & Conflict Resolution (ECCR) Forum of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). He has represented the United States at a series of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meetings on science and risk communication around radiation safety and public health in Fukushima. At the International Recovery Platform in Kobe, Japan, he facilitated a meeting of the Ministers of Emergency from 40 nations and worked with colleagues from the United Nations to craft a statement on resilience policy that became a hallmark of the 2015 Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
Tyson’s doctoral dissertation examined expert-facilitated public participation in recovery planning in post-disaster Japan. Furthermore, he has studied public participation in scientific research (a.k.a. “citizen science”), participatory recovery planning in his hometown of New Orleans (post-Katrina), and recovery from industrial mercury poisoning in Minamata, Japan.
Previously, Tyson took a 9-year sabbatical from his undergraduate degree in the 1990s to launch several "dot com" tech startups in the San Francisco Bay Area. In Japan in the early 2000s he co-founded a private English language school and overhauled the Global Communications Skills training program at Procter & Gamble’s Northeast Asia headquarters. He holds a PhD in Science & Technology Studies from Cornell University and a BA in English (Creative Writing) from Stanford University.
