In accordance with the Society’s bylaws, the terms of two Council members expire this year. Council members rotating off are Kate Moran, (Geological Oceanography) and Tommy Dickey (At-Large). The Society thanks these Council members for their time, dedication, concern and valuable contributions to the organization. Candidates have been identified for both of the positions available, and brief biographical sketches of each of the candidates are listed below.

Ballots were mailed to TOS members in early September and must be received by TOS no later than October 31, 2009. If you have not received a ballot, please contact info@tos.org.

Biographical sketches for each candidate are provided below.

GEOLOGICAL OCEANOGRAPHY COUNCILLOR

Millard F. Coffin

Mike Coffin is Professor at the University of Southampton (United Kingdom), Director of Research at the UK’s National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS), and Assistant Director at NOCS. Previously, he was Professor at the University of Tokyo Ocean Research Institute (2001-2007); Senior Research Scientist (1999-2001) and Research Scientist (1990-1999) at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics; and Research Scientist at Geoscience Australia (1985-1989). He received an A.B. in the earth sciences from Dartmouth College (1978), and an M.A. (1981), M.Phil. (1982), and Ph.D. (1985) in the geological sciences from Columbia University. His research interests encompass divergent continental margin development, transform plate boundary tectonics, subduction initiation, the origin and evolution of large igneous provinces, and bolide impacts. Mike has led or co-led eight major research expeditions on American, Australian, Japanese, and Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) vessels, and participated in 20 other research cruises on American, Australian, French, German, Japanese, and ODP ships. He has supervised the research of eight graduate students and four post-doctoral researchers. Mike has published 90 articles in the peer-reviewed literature, and these have more than 2,000 citations in the Science Citation Index. At the national and international levels, he has chaired the Commission on Large Igneous Provinces of the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior (1992-1997), the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Scientific Planning Working Group (1999-2001), the IODP Science Planning Committee (2003-2005), and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)-Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) IODP First Triennium Review Committee (2006-2007), and he has served on the Steering Committee of the NSF’s MARGINS Program (1996-1999); the Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling Scientific Committee (1998-2001); and the Senior Advisory Board of the Canadian International Development Agency’s East Africa Regional Hydrocarbon Study (1995-1997). His professional awards and honors include election as a Fellow of The Geological Society (2008), appointment as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Hawaii (2002), appointment as a visiting Professor at the University Louis Pasteur, France (2001), award of an Industrial Liaison Fellowship at the University of Oslo, Norway (1996), selection as a Joint Oceanographic Institutions/U.S. Science Advisory Committee Distinguished Lecturer (1994-1995), award of a Research Scholarship at the University of Oslo, Norway (1992), and selection as a NASA Astronaut Candidate Finalist (1984). Mike is passionate about the health of the oceans, and will work assiduously with the TOS to increase resources for oceanographic research, to raise public awareness of the critical role the oceans play in the Earth system, and to promote interdisciplinary research in the ocean sciences.

Charles A. Nittrouer

Chuck is a professor of Geological Oceanography at the University of Washington.  After receiving his PhD there in 1978, he taught for a decade each at North Carolina State University and at SUNY Stony Brook, before returning to UW a decade ago.  His teaching has been at both the undergrad and grad levels, and he has mentored over a dozen PhD grads who are now doing the same.  Chuck investigates the formation of sedimentary strata on time scales of days to millennia, and focuses on continental-margin environments stretching from coastlines (tidal flats, mangrove forests) across continental shelves and down submarine canyons and continental slopes to continental rises.  He has studied in areas dominated by fluvial sediment input and by glacial sediment input, and has worked around the world including: the east and west coasts of the US, the Amazon mouth, the Chinese coast, the Mediterranean Sea, New Guinea, Antarctica, and southeast Alaska.  Many of the studies have been large interdisciplinary investigations he has led, where physical, chemical or biological processes dramatically impact and/or are impacted by sediment dispersal.  Chuck’s involvement with TOS includes being Executive Editor of Oceanography, guest editor for three special issues of Oceanography, convener of special sessions at TOS meetings, and member of meeting organizational committees.  He hopes to continue helping TOS and oceanographers succeed with their teaching and research.

AT-LARGE COUNCILLOR

Yi Chao

Yi Chao is a Principal Scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. He received his Bachelors degree in Atmospheric Physics from University of Science and Technology of China in 1985, a Master’s degree in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics from Princeton University in 1987, and a Ph.D. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences from Princeton University in 1990. His research focuses primarily on numerical ocean modeling, satellite oceanography, ocean data assimilation, coastal oceanography and predictions, and ocean’s role in climate. He is also an adjunct Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles, and a founding member for the Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering.  He has published over 50 refereed papers.  He has participated in several field experiments in Monterey Bay, California, including Adaptive Ocean Sampling Network (AOSN) in 2003 and Adaptive Sampling and Prediction (ASAP) in 2006.  In July-August 2009, he just completed another field experiment in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Through these field experiments, he and his team has developed the OurOcean portal (http://ourocean.jpl.nasa.gov) that can access and use the 3D ocean predictions in real-time for both research and practical applications. He is the Project Scientist on the Aquarius satellite mission.  Scheduled for launch in 2010, Aquarius will be the first U.S. satellite to measure the sea surface salinity from space.  He looks forward to working with the council to support the programs of TOS and promote interdisciplinary ocean science.

Scott Doney

Scott Doney is a Senior Scientist in the Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). He graduated with a BA in chemistry from the University of California, San Diego in 1986 and a PhD in chemical oceanography from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography in 1991. He was a postdoctoral fellow and later a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, before returning to Woods Hole in 2002. He was awarded the James B. Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union in 2000, a Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow in 2004, and the WHOI W. Van Alan Clark Sr. Chair in 2007. His science interests span oceanography, climate and biogeochemistry. Much of his research focuses on how the global carbon cycle and ocean ecology respond to natural and human-driven climate change, which may act to either damp or accelerate climate trends. A current focus is on ocean acidification due to the invasion into the ocean of carbon dioxide and other chemicals from fossil fuel burning. He is currently the chair of the U.S. Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry Program and the U.S. Ocean Carbon and Climate Change Program.