Dr. Colin P. Kelley is a Senior Research Fellow with the Center for Climate and Security. He is also Associate Research Scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University. Colin is a climate scientist focusing on climate variability and change, particularly drought, in semiarid and arid regions that are especially vulnerable.  Kelley uses land-based and remotely sensed observations along with atmospheric and coupled climate models to examine the regional and large scale mechanisms of climate change.  He also has a special interest in placing such changes within a context of vulnerability and resilience due to the many other factors that relate to water and food security in order to better understand their relative importance. He has published ground-breaking research on the relationship between climate change and drought in Syria and the broader Levant, and is a regular commentator on this subject. He has a PhD from Columbia University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and was a PACE Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara.