Dr. Jennifer Auchter is the inaugural director of the New Mexico Reforestation Center (NMRC), a multi-institutional partnership that builds the state’s capacity to grow and plant seedlings at the scale needed to restore forests after severe wildfire. She approaches reforestation as water and climate infrastructure, linking forest recovery to watershed function, water supply, and landscape resilience. She holds a PhD in environmental engineering and earth sciences from Vanderbilt University. Her academic research examined Quaternary fluvial geomorphology in the eastern Himalaya and how those rivers have fed the deepwater Bengal Fan sedimentary system through time. Dr. Auchter’s career has spanned energy industry research and natural resources management and operations. Before joining NMRC, she founded the Mississippi Embayment Research Center at the University of Memphis, which established a geologic core repository to support regional groundwater research. She has also served on the Science Evaluation Panel of the International Ocean Discovery Program. Across these roles, she has translated complex science into institutional strategy, partnerships, and policy. As a Fulbright Specialist (2024–2027) at IIT Gandhinagar, she is leading training in shallow marine and deepwater sedimentary systems, delivering public talk on reforestation science and governance, and taking part in school outreach.