Ocean Deoxygenation Conference | Kiel 2018

Topic 1: Prediction and Monitoring

Laure Resplandy | Laure Resplandy is Assistant Professor at Princeton University in the Geosciences Department and the Princeton Environmental Institute. Her research interests are on the influence of climate and ocean circulation on marine biogeochemistry and ecosystems, in particular the changes in ocean oxygenation and the interactions between the carbon cycle and climate. In her work she uses data from observations and ocean and climate models.
 

Stephanie Henson | Stephanie Henson is a Senior Scientist at the National Oceanography Centre and Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Southampton. She leads an active research group in global biogeochemical oceanography, currently made up of 2 post-docs and 5 PhD students. Her particular research interests aim at understanding the variability and climate change effects on phytoplankton populations and subsequent impacts on the biological carbon pump. Her research exploits autonomous vehicles, satellite and in situ data, as well as output from biogeochemical models. In 2012, she received the EGU Award for Outstanding Young Scientist for her ‘fundamental contribution to the study of marine ecosystems’ and in 2016 she was awarded a highly competitive European Research Council Consolidator Grant.

Nicolas Gruber | Nicholas Gruber is full Professor for Environmental Physics at the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich since July 2006. His research interests are the study of biogeochemical cycles on regional to global scales and on timescales from months to millennia, with a particular focus on the interaction of these cycles with Earth's climate system. His goal is to better understand the physical, chemical and biological processes that control these cycles and to be able to make predictions for the future, especially with regard to the potential feedbacks between the global carbon cycle and a changing climate. His primary research tools are the interpretation and analysis of observational data coupled with the use of models ranging in complexity from simple box models to general circulation models.

Topic 2: Ecosystem Impacts

Lisa Levin | Dr. Lisa Levin is a sea-going biological oceanographer and Distinguished Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego. She has a PhD from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, served on the faculty of North Carolina State University for 9 years and has been back at Scripps since 1992. Her research addresses the ecology of animal communities at the sea floor, including deep continental margins and coastal wetlands. She currently studies the environmental drivers shaping oxygen minimum zone and methane seep ecosystems, and the larger consequences of climate change and human industrialization for the deep sea. This work has taken her to deep waters of the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans on over 40 research cruises, many employing submersibles, ROVs, and AUVs. Dr. Levin is founder and co-lead of the Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative, an international, multidisciplinary network of experts providing guidance on environmental management and sustainability of the deep ocean. She is also co-lead of the Deep-Ocean Observing Strategy, a GOOS program linking scientific observation to societal needs. From 2011-2017 Dr. Levin served as Director for the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at Scripps. Dr. Levin has edited for the journals Limnology and Oceanography, MEPS, Annu. Rev. Marine Science, Marine Ecology and Science Advances, has served on numerous steering and advisory committees (e.g., Census of Marine Life, BOEM, OCB, SCOR) and is currently a member of the Global Ocean Oxygen Network (IOC-UNESCO). She is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, a fellow of the AAAS, recipient of the 2011 IOC Anton Bruun Medal, and 2018 recipient of the ASLO A.C. Redfield Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Alf Norkko | Dr. Alf Norkko is a marine ecologist with a focus on benthic habitats. After his PhD at Åbo Akademi University in 1997, he spent five years in New Zealand at NIWA, and a couple of years at Kristineberg Marine Research Station in Sweden, before returning to Finland. Since 2012 he is Professor at Tvärminne Zoological Station (University of Helsinki), and he currently also serves as a Guest Professor at the Baltic Sea Centre at Stockholm University. He is broadly interested in community ecology, exploring the value of biodiversity, its role for ecosystem functioning and the mechanisms important for its maintenance and marine conservation. Coastal hypoxia as a stressor to benthic fauna has been a major topic throughout his research career. He has worked on the disturbance and resilience of benthic communities as well as impacts on benthic-pelagic coupling and biogeochemical cycles.

Arnaud Bertrand |  Dr. Arnaud Bertrand is a marine ecologist working at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (France). His research is focused on the development of integrated approaches from physics to fisheries, including biogeochemical parameters. For 20 years, he considered oxygen as a key factor driving ecological processes in a variety of tropical ecosystems. He worked 15 years in the Humboldt Current system off Peru and Chile and is currently located in Northeast Brazil where he develops a research program grounded on multidisciplinary surveys. He particularly investigated the role of dissolved oxygen on the horizontal and vertical structuration of pelagic ecosystems and further ecological interactions. For that purpose, he developed original methods to estimate the oxycline depth from acoustic data. This allows finely defining the volume habitat of pelagic species and extracting physical structures along-scale (from internal-waves to mesoscale). He also worked on the impact of dissolved oxygen concentration and oxycline depth on the spatiotemporal patterns of distribution of a variety of pelagic species but also on top predators foraging success. He holds a PhD in fisheries ecology from Ecole Nationale Supérieure Agronomique of Rennes (France). He is currently Visitant Professor at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco and the Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco (Recife, Brazil).

Topic 3: Ventilation and Oxygen Supply

Peter Brandt | Since 2007, Peter Brandt has been Professor for Experimental Oceanography in the Research Division Ocean Circulation and Climate Dynamics at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. He started his research in the remote sensing group of the Institute of Oceanography, University of Hamburg, where he completed his PhD in 1996 by studying internal wave dynamics of sea straits. In 1999, he joined the physical oceanography group at GEOMAR (also former Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences). Here he focused on physical mechanisms of ocean variability in key regions of the thermohaline and wind-driven circulation. He was chief scientist of and participated on a large number of research cruises in the Indian and subpolar and tropical Atlantic oceans. As principle investigator he takes part in several national and international projects including the EU FP7 project “Enhancing prediction of tropical Atlantic climate and its impacts (PREFACE)” or the German Collaborative Research Center 754 "Climate-Biogeochemistry Interactions in the Tropical Ocean". His main research interests are different physical processes relevant for the general ocean circulation and climate variability including equatorial and planetary ocean waves, mesoscale eddies, small-scale internal waves and mixing processes. His work encompasses strong interdisciplinary cooperation with biogeochemical scientists/groups to study oxygen distribution, ventilation and consumption in the tropical oceans as well as the interaction of physical and biogeochemical processes in the oceanic nutrient or carbon cycles.

Ivonne Montes | During her PhD, Ivonne Montes applied a Regional Ocean Model System and Lagrangian approaches to fill gaps in in-situ observations of current systems in the Southeastern Tropical Pacific. During her Postdoc under the EUROceans Consortium ‘Ocean deoxygenation’ Flagship program funded by EUR-OCEANS which took place in France, Germany and Peru, she carried pioneered studies on coupled physical-biogeochemical regional modeling applied to the Eastern boundary current system (Mexico and Peru/Chile) to investigate the processes maintaining the Oxygen Minimum Zone off Peru. Since 2014, she is a Research Scientist at Instituto Geofisico del Perú (IGP) where, as a first task, she led a project to implement a High-performance Computing System that actually is part of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory of IGP, and is available for all the scientific community. Currently, she focuses on the study of the role of the oceans in climate, the impact of remote and local air-sea interactions over the upwelling systems, and climate change associated processes. As part of the scientific community, she serves as a member of the Global Ocean Oxygen Network (GO₂NE, initiative from IOC-UNESCO, an interdisciplinary network with particular concerns about the low oxygen concentrations in both the open ocean and coastal waters) and she is acting as co-chair of the recently approved SCOR Working Group 155 ‘Eastern boundary upwelling systems (EBUS): diversity, coupled dynamics and sensitivity to climate change’.

Laurent Bopp |  Dr. Laurent Bopp is a Senior Research Scientist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Adjunct Professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris. His main research interests concern the links between climate change, marine biogeochemistry and ocean ecosystems. He is an expert in ocean biogeochemistry modeling and has been among the first to introduce marine biogeochemistry in climate models to study carbon-climate feedbacks, ocean acidification and ocean de-oxygenation, as well as the impact of climate change on ocean marine ecosystems. He is the author of more than 150 publications and was involved in the last IPCC report as a lead author; he is a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of IMBeR (Integrated Marine Biosphere Research) since 2014; he is also involved in the EU H-2020 CRESCENDO project (WP leader) on the next generation of Earth System models.

Topic 4: Microbial Communities and their Impact on Biogeochemical Cycles in Oxygen Minimum Zones

Osvaldo Ulloa | Osvaldo Ulloa received his Master's (1987) and his PhD (1992) from Dalhousie University, Canada, working in phytoplankton ecology and marine bio-optics, respectively. His postdoctorate work was carried out at the Niels Böhr Institute of the University of Copenhagen, where he worked on the carbon cycle.
Ulloa returned to Chile in 1997 and joined the University of Concepcion, where he is currently a full Professor at the Department of Oceanography and director of the Millennium Institute of Oceanography (IMO). He has trained undergraduate and graduate students in marine biology and oceanography. He has received several postdoctoral fellows, from Chile and abroad, in his lab. For over a decade, he has been one of the organizers and co-directors of the international course “Ecology and Diversity of Marine Microorganisms (ECODIM)” which has proven to be fundamental in the creation of a new generation of marine microbial ecologists in Latin America.
His most relevant scientific contributions have been in the area of biological oceanography, particularly in the study of the factors that determine the distribution patterns of phytoplankton and the microbial diversity and biogeochemistry of oxygen deficient marine environments. Ulloa’s research focus are microbial communities in marine oxygen minimum zones, particularly those of the eastern tropical south Pacific, and he and his group have contributed numerous new insights on their diversity, role in biogeochemical cycles and their genomic adaptations to this environment. Osvaldo Ulloa participates also since long in international working groups (e.g. SCOR), dealing with marine deoxygenation and the response of the microbial communities in those systems.

Bess Ward | Since 2006, Bess Ward is the Chair of the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University, New Jersey, USA. She received her Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography from the University of Washington, Seattle, focusing on the process of nitrification. During her postdoctoral years at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Ward continued to study nitrification, but also turned her attention to the oxidation of methane. Both methane and the traces gases produced during nitrification are powerful greenhouse gases and their fluxes from the ocean are largely unknown. Ward taught and did research in the Ocean Sciences Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz for nine years before moving to Princeton University in 1998. Her current interests include many aspects of the marine nitrogen cycle, especially nitrification, denitrification and anammox, nitrous oxide cycling, phytoplankton nitrogen assimilation and new production. Ward’s research program involves molecular biological research in the laboratory, as well as research expeditions in pursuit of samples and field experiments. Her current programs involve everything from stable isotope experiments to the development of DNA microarrays to investigate N assimilation by phytoplankton. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and the youngest and first female winner (1997) of the G. Evelyn Hutchinson award.

Bo Thamdrup | Bo Thamdrup is Professor for geomicrobiology at the Department of Biology, University of Southern Denmark in Odense. Bo completed a M.Sc. in biology and chemistry, and a Ph.D. on the biogeochemical cycling of manganese, iron, and sulfur in marine sediments, at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and subsequently worked for five years as a researcher with Bo Barker Jørgensen at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen. He moved to Odense in 1998 where he was associated to the Danish Centre for Earth System Science and, subsequently, the Nordic Centre for Earth Evolution.
Bo is known for his explorations of how microbes through their diverse metabolisms contribute to element cycling on local to global scales, and to Earth’s biogeochemical evolution. Bo’s contributions include quantification of the role of microbial iron and manganese reduction in the aquatic sediments, discovery of a new microbial metabolism: disproportionation of elemental sulfur as an important link in oxidative sulfur cycling, and the discovery, that anaerobic ammonium oxidation by anammox bacteria is an important sink for fixed nitrogen in natural environments. During the past decade, much of Bo’s research has focused on the geomicrobiology of oceanic oxygen minimum zones, particularly the distribution and interactions of microbial nitrogen transformations and, after the development of the highly sensitive STOX oxygen sensor by Niels Peter Revsbech, how these and other microbial processes are controlled by oxygen at nanomolar levels.

Topic 5: Major Upwelling Systems

Marina Lévy | Marina Lévy started her scientific career with a master in Oceanography, Meteorology and Environment (1993) followed by a PhD in Oceanography (1996) at Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Sorbonne Université, in Paris. Marina was a Postdoc fellow at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University between 1997 and 1998. Since 1998 she is back in Paris at LOCEAN-IPSL, working for CNRS. In parallel to her research activities, she is now the Deputy Director of the Ocean, Climate and Ressources Department of the French Research Institute for Sustainable Development, IRD.
Marina studies the interactions between ocean physics, biogeochemistry, plankton and marine ecosystems, with a particular focus on the role of ocean turbulence, and with the final goal of being able to make better predictions for the future, particularly with regard to the carbon cycle. Her primary research tools are regional, bio-physical models which Marina uses and develops to guide her interpretations of satellite and in-situ observations. Most of her work on oxygen is through long-term collaborations with the NIO in India, IMARPE in Peru, NYU-Abu Dhabi and Princeton University.

Damian L. Arévalo-Martínez | Dr. Damian L. Arévalo-Martínez is a sea-going chemical oceanographer working at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (Germany). His research is focused on biogeochemistry and air-sea gas exchange of climate-relevant trace gases. Over the last years he investigated the distribution and emissions of CO₂, N₂O and CO in different regions of the tropical Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, with particular emphasis on coastal and equatorial upwelling ecosystems and their associated oxygen minimum zones. Between 2012 and 2015 he was part of the ocean component of the EU-funded Integrated non-CO₂ Greenhouse gas Observing System (InGOS), and since then he has participated in several field campaigns within the framework of the Surface Ocean Processes in the Anthropocene (SOPRAN) project, the SCOR Working Group 143, and the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 754. Damian’s work encompasses the development and field deployment of state of the art, high-resolution spectroscopic analytical systems for gas measurements, as well as strong cooperation with physical oceanographers and biologists in order to perform detailed studies of the marine pathways and distribution of increasingly important gases like N₂O. Recently he has set focus on investigating the N₂O cycling and emissions from polar and sub-polar ecosystems, as well as on the development of autonomous, long-term observational tools for monitoring air-sea fluxes of greenhouse gases. He holds a PhD in Chemical Oceanography and a MSc in Biological Oceanography from Kiel University, as well as a BSc in Marine Biology from the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano (Colombia).

Carolin Löscher | Dr. Carolin Löscher is a Junior Professor of Geobiology at the Danish Institute for Advanced Study, and the Nordic Center for Earth Evolution at the University of Southern Denmark. Her research is focused on understanding and reconstructing the relationship between environmental change and biological evolution. The general theme linking her research projects is the impact of extremes of productivity and oxygen distribution, and the transition between qualitatively different nutrient-limitation states. Carolin studied biology and marine sciences in Berlin, Kiel and Bremen, and holds a PhD from the University of Kiel. She was a Postdoc at the University of Kiel and at GEOMAR, organized several research cruises and led various smaller projects. Over the last years, she received a Marie Curie fellowship from the European Union, a DIAS young investigator start-up grant, and a fellowship from the Templeton Foundation.
While her earlier studies were mostly centered around resolving patterns of nitrogen cycle processes and primary production in the modern Ocean, her current research is focused on biomarker identification and simplistic modeling of those processes in order to resolve major biogeochemical and ecological response patterns to climate change in a deep time perspective. A specific focus is to understand Gaian feedback cycles, their limitations in the modern Ocean, and through Earth history.

Topic 6: Physiological Effects of Oxygen and Interactions with Multiple Stressors

Denise Breitburg | Dr. Denise Breitburg is a Senior Scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Her research focusses on the effects of low oxygen on organisms ranging from fish to jellyfish and oysters, including effects on food webs, fisheries, and disease. She has also worked on the issue of multiple stressors in marine systems for over 20 years and has led or participated in several large, collaborative programs linking land use, nutrients and upper trophic level organisms in coastal systems. Her recent research explores the combined effects of hypoxia and acidification in temperate estuaries and tropical mangrove systems. Denise is co-chair of GO₂NE – the IOC-UNESCO Global Ocean Oxygen Network, and led the working group’s recent Science review on the problem of ocean deoxygenation in the open ocean and coastal waters. She has also served on the governing boards of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) and the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation (CERF). Denise holds a PhD in Marine Ecology and Ichthyology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as a BSc in Biology from Arizona State University.

Brad Seibel | Brad Seibel is Professor of Biological Oceanography working at the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science. His research employs a unique suite of field and laboratory techniques and approaches to assess the ecological consequences of climate change, including ocean acidification, deoxygenation and warming, and the role of animal energetics in ecosystem dynamics. He takes a broad comparative approach to determine the constraints on evolution and ecology. Physiological mechanism provides a foundation upon which ecosystem responses to climate change and the consequences for biogeochemical cycles can be understood. He studies organisms across size, depth, latitudinal and phylogenetic lines, from microzooplankton to macronekton, ctenophores to fishes, from the poles to the equator and from the abyssal plains to the ocean surface. He strives to integrate across levels of organization, from mitochondria to ecosystems. Most recently he has sought to reveal how physiological hypoxia tolerance determines the vertical and horizontal distributions of organisms in oxygen minimum zones. He holds a PhD in Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology and a BSc in Biological Sciences from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He completed Postdoctoral Fellowships at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

Tom Fenchel | Professor Tom Michael Fenchel is a Danish marine ecologist and Emiritus Professor at the University of Copenhagen. He integrated physical, mathematical and biological concepts to develop our understanding of marine ecological processes. Tom was instrumental in the discovery and description of the microbial loop and developed ‘Fenchel’s law’, which states that the maximum reproductive rate of organisms decreases with body size. His work focused on the role of bacteria and protists in marine biogeochemistry, spanning from their motility and chemosensory behaviour in response to different environmental cues - including oxygen, the adaptation and activity of facultative and obligate anaerobes, and the evolution of microbial life without oxygen. In 1986 he received the ECI Prize of ecology and the Huntsmann Medal for Excellence in Oceanography and in 2006 he was awarded the A.C. Redfield Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography. He is member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Royal Society London, the American National Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europaea.

Topic 7: Impacts on Fisheries/Socioeconomics

Kenny Rose |  Dr. Rose’s research centers on using mathematical and computer simulation modeling to predict and better understand fish population and food web dynamics in estuaries, lakes, reservoirs, and oceans. Dr. Rose is presently the France-Merrick Chair in Sustained Ecosystem Restoration at Horn Point Laboratory. Prior to that, he was a Professor at the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, and Associate Dean in the College of the Coast and Environment, at Louisiana State University. He started his career as a consultant in Washington, D.C. and then as a research staff member at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Dr. Rose has served on multiple editorial boards, and was recently awarded the Award of Excellence (for lifetime achievement) from the American Fisheries Society. He has been a member of multiple steering and advisory committees providing scientific guidance and oversight, including several National Academy of Sciences’ committees, the US GLOBEC program, and the US Army Corps of Engineers. Dr. Rose has been involved with a wide range of fisheries management issues and contentious environmental issues that often involve fish; these highlight the sometimes tricky arena for scientists where science meets policy and decision-making. He received his BSc degree in biology and mathematics from the University at Albany, and his graduate degrees in fisheries from the University of Washington.

Michele Casini | Dr. Michele Casini is a marine and fisheries ecologist working at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SLU (Sweden). He is currently Professor in Marine ecology and fisheries management at SLU’s Department of Aquatic Resources. His research activities are mainly focused on fish ecology, population dynamics, trophic interactions and ecosystem functioning, at both temporal and spatial scales. In general, his research has overall addressed the issue of integrating information on hydro-climate, human-related aspects (such as fishery and eutrophication) and species interactions to foster an ecosystem-based management of the natural resources, using the brackish Baltic Sea as model system. His research has generated a great deal of interest, and has been cited by, among others, the New Scientist and BBC News. Dr. Casini has been Chair and member of several Working Groups within the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and collaborated with the European Commission and European Parliament for the implementation of an ecosystem-based fisheries management. He also collaborates with third-world countries, especially in Africa, in fisheries management and biological conservation. He received his BSc degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Bologna (Italy), and his graduate degrees in Marine Ecology from the University of Gothenburg (Sweden).

Rashid Sumaila | Dr. Rashid Sumaila is Professor and Director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit & the Ocean Canada Partnership at the University of British Columbia. He specializes in bioeconomics, marine ecosystem valuation and the analysis of global issues such as fisheries subsidies, illegal fishing, climate change and oil spills. Sumaila has authored over 225 journal articles; including in Science, Nature and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. He is winner of the 2017 Volvo Environment Prize, the 2017 Benchley Oceans Award in Science, the 2016 UBC Killam Research Prize, and the 2013 American Fisheries Society Excellence in Public Outreach Award, the 2009 Stanford Leopold Leadership Fellowship and the 2008 Pew Marine Fellowship. Sumaila was named a Hokkaido University Ambassador in 2016. He has given talks at the UN Rio+20, the WTO, the White House, the Canadian Parliament, the African Union, the British House of Lords and the St James Palace on the invitation of Prince Charles. His research has generated a great deal of interest, and has been cited by, among others, The Economist, The Boston Globe, New York Times, the Globe and Mail, the Wall Street Journal and the Vancouver Sun.

Topic 8: Coastal Systems: From Understanding to Management

Daniel Conley | Professor Conley completed a PhD in Chemical Oceanography from the University of Michigan in 1987 and was an Assistant Research Professor at Horn Point Laboratory at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Studies, USA. He moved to the National Environmental Research Institute, Denmark in 1995 where he worked on the marine monitoring program and then to Lund University, Sweden where he held a Marie Curie Chair from 2007-2009. Conley is a Pew Fellow for Marine Conservation, a Wallenberg Scholar and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He is currently a Professor in Biogeochemistry in the Department of Geology at Lund University, Sweden.
His research focuses on the perturbation of nutrient cycles by human activities and the responses of marine ecosystems to changes in human impact and climate. He is engaged in research on the spread of dead zones in estuaries and coasts, and the impact of low oxygen upon biogeochemical cycles. In addition, he carries out research on the global biogeochemical silica cycle and has shown that the Si cycle is dominated by biological processes along the land-sea continuum. Finally, his recent research has suggested that the first biological impacts on the global Si cycle were likely by prokaryotes in deep time during the Archean with further decreases in oceanic dissolved Si with the evolution of widespread, large-scale skeletal biosilicification.

Nancy Rabalais | Nancy N. Rabalais is a Professor and the Shell Endowed Chair in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at Louisiana State University. Her research interests include the dynamics of hypoxic environments, interactions of large rivers with the coastal ocean, estuarine and coastal eutrophication, benthic ecology, fate and effects of contaminants, and science policy. She is an author of 3 books, 34 book chapters, and over 125 peer-reviewed publications.
Dr. Rabalais is active in state, national and international working groups, panels, and advisory boards. She currently serves on the University-National Oceanographic Laboratories Fleet Improvement Committee and Board of Directors of the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System. She has served on eight National Research Committees for the National Academies and is a past member and chair of the Ocean Studies Board.
Dr. Rabalais has received numerous awards for her work on eutrophication and coastal hypoxia. She is an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow, an American Geophysical Union Fellow, an Aldo Leopold Leadership Program Fellow, and a National Associate of the National Academies of Science. She was awarded the Clarke Prize of the National Water Resources Institute, the Ruth Patrick Award of the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, the B. K. Ketchum award from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Blasker Award for Environmental Science and Engineering, shared with R. E. Turner, a Rachel Carson Lectureship for the American Geophysical Union, the Benchley award, the Heinz award, and in 2012 was named a MacArthur Fellow.

Jianping Gan | Dr. Jianping Gan graduated from the Department of Atmosphere and Ocean Sciences, McGill University (Canada) in 1995. He is a Chair Professor in the Department of Ocean Science and Associate Dean of Fok Ying Tung Graduate School, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He joined HKUST in 2003 after 15-years of research in Canada and United States. He is a physical oceanographer conducting hard-core research in ocean circulation, marine ecosystem dynamics and numerical ocean modeling. In the last 30 years of his career, he has made various contributions in these fields.
Prof. Gan has contributed to geophysical fluid dynamics of ocean circulation and interdisciplinary numerical ocean modeling study. In particular, he has developed the knowledge-based numerical modeling of ocean circulation and of associated physical dynamics in the China Seas and in other parts of the world’s oceans. He has also developed the first hard-core interdisciplinary study in coupled physical-biogeochemical dynamics, both in numerical modeling, field measurement and process study in Hong Kong.
Prof. Gan has participated in several grand research projects as a PI, such as Coastal Ocean Advances in Shelf Transports (COAST, USA), the National Basic Research Project (973 Project, China) on Carbon Cycle in China Seas (Mainland China) and an on-going Theme-based Research Scheme (Hong Kong, China). He actively served in international and domestic. communities. He was elected as a founding President of the Ocean Section and a council member in the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS).

Topic 9: Ocean Deoxygenation - How the Past can Inform the Future

Eric Galbraith | Eric Galbraith is an ICREA Research Professor, based at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He completed his PhD in oceanography at the University of British Columbia in 2006, worked as a Research Associate at Princeton University in the US, and also as a Professor at McGill University in Canada. His research is broadly interdisciplinary, and is generally concerned with using numerical models and data analysis to better understand the interactions between climate change, human activities and the marine ecosystem. He has worked on both past and anticipated climate changes and their links with ocean biogeochemistry, as well general principles of air-sea exchange, nutrient cycling and ecosystem stoichiometry. One favourite topic of his work has been natural changes in dissolved oxygen on ice age timescales, and related links with the nitrogen cycle. His current research project, BIGSEA, focuses on developing a better understanding of linkages between fisheries, climate change and marine biogeochemistry.

Zunli Lu | Since 2011, Zunli Lu has been an Associate Professor for the Department of Earth Sciences of Syracuse University, where he currently serves as Director of Graduate Studies. Zunli started his research studying halogen and I-129 Systematics in the gas hydrate fields, looking at the implications for the transport of iodine and methane in active margins, at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Rochester, where he completed his PhD in 2008. He then joined the Ocean Biogeochemistry Group at the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Oxford, where he studied the potential of ikaites in marine sediments as a paleo-environmental temperature proxy. Dr. Lu has been awarded several grants covering multiple disciplines (RAPID: Developing sensitivity tests for detecting water chemistry changes associated with shale bed methane production in the Appalachian Basin; and a recent NSF collaborative NSF grant: Refining foraminiferal I/Ca as a paleoceanographic oxygenation proxy for the glacial Atlantic Ocean’). His multi-disciplinarity is also reflected in his publication record. Zunli has pioneered the development and application of iodine in foraminifera as a sea water redox proxy, confirming the earliest appearance of dissolved oxygen in the ocean’s surface waters, and discovering oxygen depleted subsurface waters in the Southern Ocean during the last glacial period.

Dimitri Gutierrez | Dr. Dimitri Gutiérrez is the Director of Research in Oceanography and Climate Change of the Peruvian Marine Research Institute (IMARPE). He received his PhD degree in oceanography at the University of Concepción, Chile, in 2000. As a biological oceanographer, his research has been focused on benthic responses to natural and human-induced hypoxia, effects of climate variability on the marine productivity and subsurface oxygenation in the coastal South Eastern Pacific involving paleoproxies and in situ data analyses, and recent spatial and temporal changes of the Peruvian upwelling as related to global trends. Currently Dr. Gutierrez is also involved in developing adaptation projects for the impact of climate change on Peruvian fisheries and marine coastal ecosystems and participates in the IOC-UNESCO Global Ocean Oxygen Network (GO₂NE).

Topic 10: Biogeochemical Cycles: Feedbacks and Interactions

Wei-Jun Cai | Wei-Jun Cai is Professor of Oceanography at the School of Marine and Policy of the University of Delaware, where he holds the title of Mary A. S. Lighthipe Chair of Earth, Ocean and Environment. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California in 1992 and, after a postdoctoral fellowship at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, became a faculty member in the Department of Marine Sciences, University of Georgia (1994-2012). Cai is an expert in the marine carbon cycle and biogeochemistry. His research areas include, in early days, CaCO₃ dissolution and sediment diagenesis in the sea floor using microelectrodes (O₂, pH and pCO₂) and, since 1998, air-sea exchange of CO₂ and carbon cycling in estuarine and coastal oceans. Most recently, his research focuses on the responses of the coastal ocean carbon cycle and ecosystem to a changing terrestrial export of carbon and nutrients, interactions between coastal ocean acidification and eutrophication-hypoxia, mechanisms of coral calcification, and carbon cycle and acidification in the Arctic Ocean. Cai has collaborated extensively with colleagues in China and elsewhere. Cai has published 150 peer reviewed papers. In 2017, Cai was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and Fellow of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO).

Donald Canfield | Don Canfield received a Bachelor's Degree (magna cum lauda) in chemistry from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in 1979.  From there he spent two years studying the biogeochemistry of Antarctic Dry Valley lakes, entering the PhD program in Geology at Yale University 1982, where he studied the early diagenesis of modern marine sediments with Bob Berner.  In this work he was one of the first to explore and quantify the relationship between the iron and sulfur cycles in sediments. After his PhD, Canfield incorporated more microbiology into his work, exploring the chemical and microbiological dynamics of microbial mats with Dave Des Marais at NASA-Ames research center. After a short stay at Georgia Tech, Canfield worked 3 years at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, where he turned to exploring the systematics of sulfur isotope fractionation and the evolution of the sulfur through geologic time. From here, Canfield moved to his current home at the University of Southern Denmark, where he explores the physiology of modern organisms and their role in biogeochemical cycling, as a basis for understanding the interplay between the evolution of life and the evolution of the Earth surface environment through time. Canfield in member of the National Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Royal Societies of Denmark and Sweden as well a fellow of the Geochemical Society, the American Association of Microbiology, AGU and AAAS. He has received the Vladimir Vernadsky Award from EGU and the Urey Prize from EAG.

Tom Jilbert | Tom Jilbert is Assistant Professor in Aquatic Biogeochemistry at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He graduated in Environmental Geoscience (BSC. Hons) from the University of Edinburgh, UK in 2003 and completed his PhD in Marine Geochemistry at the University of Utrecht (Netherlands) in 2008. Tom’s research interests in the marine realm include the coupled cycling of phosphorus, iron and carbon in eutrophied coastal systems, especially in the Baltic Sea. He is specialized in sediment biogeochemistry, with a focus on understanding short timescale feedbacks in elemental cycling in low-oxygen systems through the use of high-resolution geochemical analysis approaches such as MicroXRF and laser ablation ICP-MS. Tom was a postdoc within the groups of Caroline Slomp at Utrecht and Susanna Hietanen at Helsinki before being appointed to his current position at Helsinki in 2016. As well as ongoing work on the mechanisms of coastal hypoxia his current research activities include the study of eutrophied freshwater systems, with a focus on understanding the role of legacy phosphorus in determining the timescale of recovery from eutrophication.  

Gendered Research and Innovations

Londa Schiebinger | Londa Schiebinger is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science at Stanford University. She currently directs the EU/US Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environment project. She is a leading international expert on gender in science and technology and has addressed the United Nations on the topic of “Gender, Science, and Technology.” She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize and Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work on Gendered Innovations (genderedinnovations.stanford.edu) harnesses the creative power of sex and gender analysis to enhance excellence and reproducibility in science and technology.