DR. PAUL SAMMARCO

Dr. Sammarco is a Professor at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON), Chauvin, Louisiana, USA who has been conducting research on coral reef ecology for over 40 years, in the western Atlantic (Caribbean, Florida Keys, Gulf of Mexico, and the Bahamas) and on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. He has over 235 publications and has served as an Assistant Professor at Clarkson University (NY), a senior research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, and Executive Director and a Research Professor at LUMCON. He also served as the Director of Environmental Research for the Resource Assessment Commission, Dept. of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australia for several years (PM’s personal commission on key natural resource and environmental issues), providing Dr. Sammarco with intensive training and experience in government policy and decision making. He is currently Executive Director of the Association of Marine Laboratories of the Caribbean (AMLC), Chairman of the State Commission for the South Louisiana Wetlands Discovery Center (SLWDC), Associate Editor of Aquatic Biology. He was also an editor for Marine Ecology Progress Series and Marine Biology (Berlin) for 6 yrs each, consecutively. His Ph.D. is in ecology and evolution, but has conducted interdisciplinary work with numerous collaborators in biophysics; natural products chemistry and chemical ecology; geology – stable isotope geochemistry, bio-erosion, and reef growth processes; meteorology – climate change, sea surface temperatures, and prediction of coral bleaching; mathematics – analytical modeling; and oil spill remediation techniques.