David Applegate

Dave Applegate serves as the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) chief scientist and acting associate director for Natural Hazards. He joined the USGS in 2004 as the first senior science advisor for earthquake & geologic hazards; he subsequently served as associate director for Natural Hazards and was the 18th Director of the USGS from 2022 to 2025. Before coming to the USGS, he directed science policy at the American Geosciences Institute and before that served with the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources as the American Geophysical Union's Congressional Science Fellow and as a professional staff member. He has a Bachelor of Science in geology from Yale University and a PhD, also in geology, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.