Overview
Jessica Castner, PhD, RN-BC, FAEN, FAAN serves as 2025-26 Climate Leader in Residence at Duke University as a distinguished expert in nursing leadership and health policy. As the National Academy of Medicine's 2021-22 Distinguished Nurse Scholar in Residence, Castner contributed to evidence-based policy development at the federal level related to climate change, disasters, environmental health, clinician wellbeing, and artificial intelligence applications. Dr. Castner joins Duke University as President of Castner incorporated, a woman-owned small business research institute and as University at Albany tenured faculty, where she was awarded the rank of full Professor. As the inaugural Director of Nursing at the University at Albany, Castner led the opening of a new academic unit with graduate and undergraduate programs.
With an internationally renowned reputation for expertise, scholarship, and leadership in emergency and environmental health nursing, Castner’s trajectory has attracted funding support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), American Nurses Association, American Nurses Foundation, American Academy of Nursing, Emergency Nurses Association Foundation, Emergency Medicine Foundation, Heilbrunn Family philanthropy through Rockefeller University, Patricia Garman Endowment, and other foundations. Castner’s research impact centers on multi-level environmental and contextual determinants of emergency health outcomes. Widely published in nursing and interdisciplinary peer reviewed journals, Castner served as the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Emergency Nursing during the COVID-19 public health emergency. In 2025, Castner was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Thoracic Society’s Terrorism and Inhalation Disaster section.
Dr. Castner earned a BSN from Marquette University, made possible through a Bradley Foundation scholarship gift. Castner earned her MSN with a public health nursing concentration track from the University of Missouri-Columbia and PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Dr. Castner has also completed a certificate in Executive Healthcare Leadership from Cornell University.