James Yoon '05

James Yoon '05, Ph.D., has been named a member of the 2024 cohort of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's New Voices in Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine program. These are early- and mid-career scientists, engineers, and medical professionals who – over the next two years – will advise the National Academies and work to advance STEM education.

Yoon is a water security and resilience scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. His research focuses on the development and application of advanced modeling and simulation techniques to understand, quantify and evaluate impacts to water systems, targeting solutions that can enhance water security and critical infrastructure resilience under changing and adverse conditions. Yoon obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University, where his research focused on the development of a multi-agent hydrologic-economic model for evaluation of water security in Jordan and the Middle East. He spearheaded the Jordan Water Project (JWP), an international interdisciplinary research project supported by a consortium of national science agencies with further assistance from USAID.

Prior to his work at Stanford, Yoon, a civil engineering major at UCLA, spent several years working as a water resources engineer at MWH Global in Southern California, consulting for municipal clients across the western U.S. He is also co-founder of WellDone International, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization working to support clean water and sanitation projects in underserved regions across the developing world.

Read the full press release here.