Dr. Michael Angelo Castellini

Dr. Castellini is the Director of the Institute of Marine Science, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Projects focus on many different aspects of marine mammal biology. Some of these include nutritional physiology of harbor seals and Steller sea lions in Alaska as related to their population declines and to the survival of seal and sea lion pups. Other projects include studies on lipid metabolism in marine mammals, the biochemistry of contaminants, metal chemistry, anti-oxident chemistry and immune function. These programs are both field based from the Arctic to the Antarctic and conducted in collaboration with marine laboratories throughout North America.
 

Dr. James M. Coleman

James M. Coleman is a Boyd Professor for the Coastal Studies Institute and recently served as Interim Vice-Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies at Louisiana State University. He started his professional career as a graduate student at Coastal Studies Institute, LSU, and eventually serving as director of CSI, chairman of Geology and Geophysics, head of the School of Geoscience, and interim dean of Basic Sciences before being named Executive Vice-Chancellor in 1989. He has conducted worldwide research on deltaic sedimentation, riverine processes, marine geology, shallow structure of shelf sediments, and muddy coasts. He serves on numerous local, state, and national committees and is presently a member of the Ocean Studies Board, National Research Council, and has recently been appointed to the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy.
 

Dr. Robert J. Diaz

Dr. Diaz's research interests center around understanding trophic dynamics and the functional importance of production in ecosystems, benthic boundary layer processes, and organism-habitat interactions, and how perturbations of these processes influence energy flow and population dynamics. Recently he has focused on organism-habitat interaction on the inner continental shelf to predict how sand dredging will affect fish and invertebrate communities. He is striving to estimate the relative resource value of various estuarine and marine benthic habitat types for the dual purpose of quantifying energy flow between habitats and for developing environmentally sound management strategies. This research has led him to consider a landscape ecological approach to looking within and between systems around the U.S. for how the physical and biological processes interact. In addition, he is also interested in the application of the statistical and numerical methods to biological data and in the ecology and taxonomy of estuarine and marine invertebrates with specialization in oligochaetes.

Dr. Duane A. Gill

Dr. Gill is Professor of Sociology in the Social Science Research Center and Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work at Mississippi State University. He has conducted research on the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Gulf of Mexico fisheries, and various environmental issues in Mississippi. His research interests include the study of technological disasters, natural resource management, and community.
 

Dr. Oliver Scott Goldsmith

Dr. Goldsmith is the Director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research and a Professor of Economics at the University of Alaska Anchorage. During his 28 years at the Institute. Dr. Goldsmith has concentrated his research on the structure of the Alaska economy, Alaska fiscal policy, and energy supply and demand.
 

Dr. Richard Hildreth

Dr. Hildreth is the author of three casebooks and many other publications on ocean and coastal law. He has consulted frequently with federal and state coastal management agencies in the U.S. and Australia and with Pacific Island governments on environmental legal matters. Dr. Hildreth served as the University of Queensland Law Faculty's 50th Anniversary Visiting Fellow. He has served on the National Research Council's Non-mature Oysters and Coastal Ocean Committees, the Pacific Northwest Regional Marine Research Board, and the editorial advisory boards of the journals Coastal Management and Ocean Development and International Law. Dr. Hildreth practiced business law with Steinhart & Falconer in San Francisco before teaching law.
 

Dr. P. Michael Kosro

Dr. Kosro is an Associate Professor of Oceanography at Oregon State University. His research focus is coastal physical oceanography. Since 1997, his group has employed a growing array of HF radiowave systems for time-series mapping of the surface circulation over the Oregon shelf and slope, for a region presently 400x150 km. He also makes conventional moored and shipborne measurements. Recent studies include the circulation changes off Oregon associated with the 1997-98 El Nino, the mesoscale features of the upwelling circulation, California Current and undercurrent, and spatial mapping of tidal flows.

Dr. Charles R. Marek

Dr. Marek has been employed by Vulcan Materials Company (VMC) since October, 1972. He began his career with VMC as a Construction Materials Engineer, became a Senior Materials Engineer, and in 1986 was promoted to Technical Director, a position he held for 10 years. As Technical Director, he was responsible for the technical and administrative activities of the corporation's research and development department. Since 1996, Dr. Marek has been the Principal Materials Engineer for the Company, and works at the VMC Technical Services Center located in Birmingham, Alabama. He actively participates in and promotes research by industry, universities, public funded agencies, and trade associations on select projects and problems/ opportunities of interest and importance to Vulcan and to the aggregate and construction industry in general. He provides liaison and representation with numerous technical organizations, research programs, and committees for the purpose of developing sound technical information on crushed stone/aggregates and promoting improved/more suitable specifications and test methods for these materials and for end-use products made with the materials. Dr Marek was on the academic and research staff of the Civil Engineering Department of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, from 1963 until joining VMC in 1972.

Dr. Livingston S. Marshall, Jr.

Dr. Marshall received his B.S. in Marine Science from Hampton University (1985), and a Ph. D. in Marine Science from the School of Marine Science, Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences, The College of William and Mary (1992). He has 12+ years of research experience working in sub-tropical marine and estuarine systems. His current research activities are focused on food web dynamics, applied fishery ecology and conservation biology, with research support from several funding agencies including NOAA, EPA, and Maryland Department of Natural Resources. In 1998, Dr. Marshall was appointed Associate Professor in the Biology Department, Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland. This appointment followed a similar appointment at Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia, and a previous appointment as Assistant Professor and Director, the Combined BS/MS Program in Marine, Estuarine and Environmental Sciences, Department of Natural Sciences, University of Maryland at Eastern Shore. In 1998, Dr. Marshall was also appointed Research Associate at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. In addition to his research, teaching, and outreach responsibilities at Morgan State University. Dr. Marshall maintains a very active program involving undergraduate and graduate student training with a focus on expanding opportunities for underrepresented individuals in Marine and Environmental Sciences.
 

Dr. Michael A. Rex

Dr. Rex’s research is centered on the ecology and evolution of deep-sea benthic communities. It includes analyses of bathymetric and global-scale patterns of biodiversity and their causes. We are using satellite imagery to examine the relationship of surface production to community structure in the deep sea at different temporal and spatial scales. Geographic variation in body size of mollusks is being explored to study adaptation to the deep-sea environment. Multivariate analyses of shell architecture and mitochondrial DNA are being employed to study patterns of population differentiation in deep-sea mollusks. Adaptive radiation and taxon cycles are being investigated by documenting patterns of taxonomic diversity. A major long-term research goal is to synthesize patterns of distribution, geographic variation, taxonomic composition and life histories to formulate a model of evolution in deep-sea invertebrates.
 

Dr. Edella C. Schlager

Dr. Schlager is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Arizona. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Indiana University. Her research centers on local community management of natural resources, such as watersheds in the western United States and coastal fisheries.
 

Dr. Mary I. Scranton

Dr. Scranton is interested in the factors controlling the cycling of organic compounds in sediments and in the water column. Since fatty acids and methane are important in the anaerobic decomposition of organic macromolecules, she has been studying the processes controlling the cycling of these compounds in both water column and sediment environments. She and Dr. Gordon Taylor are collaborating with Drs. Frank Muller-Karger of the University of South Florida and Robert Thunell of the University of South Carolina, along with scientists from the Fundación la Salle and the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela, on CARIACO (Carbon Retention in a Colored Ocean) program, a study of carbon cycling in the Cariaco Basin, Venezuela. The Marine Sciences Research Center component of the study is using a variety of techniques (including measurements of fatty acid concentrations and turnover rates (Scranton), and measurements of bacterial abundance and production and chemosynthesis (Taylor)) to determine how bacterial activity is influenced by carbon supply (primary production, particle flux, chemoautotrophic production under suboxic conditions), and oxygen content. She also has a long-standing interest in methane geochemistry and is investigating the role of seeps and vents, and possibly of destabilizing gas hydrates, in controlling water-column methane concentrations near the US North-East continental shelf.
 

Dr. Lynda P. Shapiro

After completing her Ph.D. at Duke University, Dr. Shapiro worked at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, and the University of Oregon. She directed the University’s marine laboratory, the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology, from 1990 to 2001, and continues there as a Professor of Biology. Dr. Shapiro’s research centers on the biology of pelagic marine phytoplankton. In recent years, she has focused on the distributions and abundances of the eukaryotic ultraplankton, on incorporation of these minute cells into the microbial food web, and on the role of associated bacteria on the nutrition of phytoplankton. She also is interested in harmful algal blooms and in the sustainable harvesting of marine macroalgae.
 

Dr. Joseph Patrick Smith

Dr. Smith is group leader for environmental technology research at ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company. He holds a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley (1978) and a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Rochester (1972). He joined Exxon Production Research Company in 1981 and has been active in research on the environmental aspects of offshore oil and gas operations since 1990. Recognized as an expert on the modeling of offshore discharges and on the environmental fate and effects of drilling and production discharges, he is currently involved in research on the environmental fate of synthetic based drilling fluids, the fate of mercury in drilling wastes, and oil spill response techniques for deepwater and arctic environments. He has also chaired or served on the steering groups for many joint industry environmental studies sponsored by organizations such as the American Petroleum Institute, the Offshore Operators Committee, the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers and the Petroleum Industry Operators Environment, Health, and Safety Committee (Angola).
 

Dr. Denise M. Stephenson-Hawk

Dr. Stephenson-Hawk chairs a consulting group assisting organizations with the application and use of science for purpose of strategically influencing policy and organizational and resource allocation decisions. She has served as an ocean systems analyst at AT&T Bell Laboratories, an atmospheric scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Langley Research Center, and as professor, chair and provost within academia. She has served as a principal investigator for research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, U. S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Education. She has also been appointed to national committees that include the NSF’s Geosciences Advisory Committee, NASA’s Earth Systems Science Applications Advisory Committee, the Ocean Research Advisory Panel of the National Ocean Partnership Program and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Science Advisory Board. She has worked with educators at the K-12 level, serving as co-chair for statewide (Georgia) workshops for K-12 teachers of mathematics and science and as co-principal investigator for an NSF-funded Urban Systemic Initiative in Atlanta, Georgia.
 

Dr. John H. Trefry

Dr. Trefry is a Professor of Chemical Oceanography at Florida Institute of Technology. His research activities focus on the concentrations and cycling of trace metals in rivers, estuaries, oceans and deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Trace metals are studied for their natural value and for their potential as pollutants. Dr. Trefry’s research activities are carried out in a wide variety of geographical settings including the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the Alaskan Arctic, the Gulf of Mexico and the Indian River Lagoon, Florida.

For more information, contact Carolyn Beamer