Matt Fouch
Chief Scientist and Co-Founder, Samara/Data
Matt Fouch has leveraged his background as a former tenured professor at Arizona State University and staff scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington to grow Samara/Data from a bespoke scientific consulting firm into a diverse company that offers a broad range of software, hardware and consulting services.
Fouch has driven the development of a deep customer base composed of federal defense and civilian agencies, small high-growth rate companies and nonprofits focused on scientific research and management, while leveraging opportunities to formalize partnerships and catalyze new startups. Fouch said Samara/Data’s key to rapid growth has been in part because of its team’s remote-work experience and unique client offerings.
“We’ve been able to survive and thrive since the beginning of COVID given our amazing and dedicated team, as well as our technical and strategic approach to remote work,” he said. “We leveraged the opportunity to interact more directly with clients who saw how effectively and efficiently we could collaborate remotely with tools we’d already been using for years.”
While not an original target area for the company, global climate change is emerging as a central theme across most of Samara/Data’s business lines, as the vast majority of its customer base is either focused on weather and climate analysis, or directly affected by the effects of global climate change.
Why Watch
2022 promises to be a very exciting year for Fouch and Samara/Data. The company has forged new partnerships and accessed several innovative new funding sources. The primary focus for the foreseeable future is to develop new technologies that benefit society through the monitoring of natural hazards in the short term, and global climate change in the long term.
Fouch will be spurring these initiatives with a dual focus on growing a customer base in a completely new vertical while driving emerging opportunities from global climate change and natural hazard monitoring that can benefit society.