Cindy Lee Van Dover is the Harvey Smith Professor of Biological Oceanography and chair of the Division of Marine Science and Conservation at Duke University. She is also the director of the Duke University Marine Laboratory. Her primary area of research is oceanography, but she also studies biodiversity, biogeochemistry, conservation biology, ecology, and marine science.
Dawn Jeannine Wright is an American geographer and oceanographer. She is a leading authority in the application of geographic information system (GIS) technology to the field of ocean and coastal science, and played a key role in creating the first GIS data model for the oceans. Wright is Chief Scientist of the Environmental Systems Research Institute. She has also been a professor of geography and oceanography at Oregon State University since 1995 and is a former Oregon Professor of the Year as named by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Wright was the first African-American female to dive to the ocean floor in the deep submersible ALVIN. On July 12, 2022 she became the first and only Black person to dive to Challenger Deep, the deepest point on Earth, and to successfully operate a sidescan sonar at full-ocean depth.
Katrina Jane Edwards was a pioneering geomicrobiologist known for her studies of organisms living below the ocean floor, specifically exploring the interactions between the microbes and their geological surroundings, and how global processes were influenced by these interactions. She spearheaded the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigation (C-DEBI) project at the University of Southern California, which is ongoing. Edwards also helped organize the deep biosphere research community by heading the Fe-Oxidizing Microbial Observatory Project on Loihi Seamount, and serving on several program steering committees involving ocean drilling. Edwards taught at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and later became a professor at the University of Southern California.[1][2]
Erin Christine Pettit is an American glaciologist focusing on climate change. She is an associate professor of geophysics and glaciology at Oregon State University. Her work focuses on ice-ocean interactions, ice-shelf disintegration, sea-level rise and ocean circulation changes.
Kim M. Cobb is an American climate scientist. She is Professor of Environment and Society and Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University, where she directs the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. Cobb was previously a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is particularly interested in oceanography, geochemistry and paleoclimate modeling.
Bhamidipati Lakshmidhara Kanakadri Somayajulu (1937-2016) is an Indian geochemist and a CSIR Emeritus Scientist at Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad. He is known for his studies on ancient and contemporary marine processes and is an elected fellow of several science societies such as the National Academy of Sciences, India, Geological Society of India, Indian Geophysical Union, American Geophysical Union, European Association for Geochemistry, Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences in 1978.
Sethunathasarma Krishnaswami (1945–2015), popularly known as Swami, was an Indian geochemist and an honorary scientist at the geosciences division of the Physical Research Laboratory. He was known for his studies on low temperature geochemistry and was an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, The World Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India, American Geophysical Union, Geochemical Society and European Association of Geochemistry (2003). The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Earth, atmosphere, ocean and planetary Sciences in 1984.
Aradhna Tripati is an American geoscientist, climate scientist, and advocate for diversity. She is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she is part of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and the California Nanosystems Institute. She is also the director of the Center for Diverse Leadership in Science. Her research includes advancing new chemical tracers for the study of environmental processes and studying the history of climate change and Earth systems. She is recognized for her research on climate change and clumped isotope geochemistry. She studies the evolution of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and the impacts on temperature, the water cycle, glaciers and ice sheets, and ocean acidity.
Nancy Helen Marcus was an American biologist and oceanographer. During her graduate studies, Marcus became known as an expert on copepod ecology and evolutionary biology. She began her career as a postdoctoral fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where she studied copepod dormancy and its implications for marine aquaculture. She continued her field research as a professor of oceanography and later as the director of the Florida State University Marine Laboratory (FSU). During this time Marcus was elected as a Fellow of the Association for Women in Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and served as the president of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography. As the president, she led efforts in increase education activities and to increase the endowment fund.
Claudia Benitez-Nelson is a Latinx American oceanographer whose research focuses on marine geochemistry and biogeochemistry. A Carolina Distinguished Professor, she serves as the Senior Associate Dean for College Initiatives and Interdisciplinary Programs at the University of South Carolina’s College of Arts and Sciences.
Melanie Harrison Okoro is a marine estuarine and environmental scientist. She is the founder, CEO, and principal of Eco-Alpha Environmental & Engineering Services. Okoro focuses on environmental aquatic biogeochemistry, professional natural resource management, and STEM diversity initiatives. She is the first African-American women early-career scientist to serve on the Council of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
Adina Paytan is a research professor at the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. known for research into biogeochemical cycling in the present and the past. She has over 270 scientific publications in journals such as Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Geophysical Research Letters.
Kathleen R. Johnson is an American member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians who is a geologist and paleoclimatologist. Her research focuses on reconstructing past climate change with speleothems, on active cave monitoring to understand the interaction of climate with speleotherm geochemistry, and analyzes climate and paleoclimate data to investigate natural climate variability. She earned a PhD from the University of California Berkeley in 2004 and is an associate professor at the University of California Irvine.
Rana Arnold Fine is Professor Emeritus at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Her research primarily addresses understanding ocean circulation processes over time through the use of chemical tracers and the connection to climate.
Karen Louise Von Damm was an American marine geochemist who studied underseas hydrothermal vent systems. Her work on black smoker hot springs after they were first discovered on the mid-ocean ridge in 1979 significantly advanced understanding of how vent fluids acquire their chemical composition and how those chemicals support biological communities. An area of hydrothermal vents located just south of Grand Cayman in the Caribbean was named the Von Damm Vent Field in her honor.
Ambrose Jearld Jr. is a marine biologist who started his career as one of the first black fisheries biologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He spent his nearly 40-year career at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The lecture series named after him in Woods Hole reflects his career-long commitment to increasing diversity in environmental and fisheries sciences.
Christine Sharon Grant is an American chemical engineer who is the Associate Dean of Faculty Advancement at North Carolina State University. Her research considers surface and environmental science. She is the 2022 President of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Colleen Beckmann Mouw is an associate professor at the University of Rhode Island known for her work on phytoplankton ecology and increasing retention of women in oceanography.
Elizabeth A. Canuel is a chemical oceanographer known for her work on organic carbon cycling in aquatic environments. She is the Chancellor Professor of Marine Science at the College of William & Mary and is an elected fellow of the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry.
