Victoria F. Avery
As Associate Program Coordinator of the USGS Volcano Hazards Program, Vic assisted with strategic science planning and communications with federal decision makers about the accomplishments and challenges of approximately 165 scientists and administrative staff in the five USGS Volcano observatories and the international Volcano Disaster Assistance Program.
Vic retired from the USGS in July of 2022 and is now a Scientist Emeritus.
Vic returned to the USGS in January 2015 after nine years as a Source Strategies Analyst at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), where she created imagery collection strategies using classified and commercial remote sensing assets for a wide range of applications, specializing in natural disaster response and homeland security issues. Prior to that, she performed similar work in the USGS National Civil Applications Center (NCAC) for 3.5 years, greatly expanding the target deck for the Global Fiducials Program, a long-term worldwide monitoring of environmental sites of significance, including NSF Long-Term Environmental Monitoring (LTER) sites. While awaiting the restoration of her clearances to work in the NCAC she spent 15 months in the experimental USGS Center for Integration of Natural Disaster Information (CINDI), creating new communications products for a wide range of natural hazards. Prior to USGS Vic spent 8 years as a Research Assistant to Dr. Richard Fiske and Dr. Sorena Sorensen in the Department of Mineral Sciences, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, doing fieldwork in the Sierra Nevada and on the Big Island of Hawaii, and conducting XRF analyses of igneous and metamorphic rocks. Vic obtained her M.S. in Geology from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1992 (where she helped monitor the 1989-1990 eruption of Redoubt Volcano), and B.S. in Geology from the College of William and Mary in 1985. In between those degrees, she worked as a photogrammetrist for 2.5 years at the Central Intelligence Agency’s National Photographic Interpretation Center, one of the predecessor agencies to the NGA. Vic holds Top Secret/SCI clearances.