Lisa Levin Explained

Lisa A. Levin
Workplaces:North Carolina State University (1983-1992)
Scripps Institution of Oceanography (1992-Present)
Alma Mater:Radcliffe College
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Doctoral Advisor:Paul K. Dayton

Lisa A. Levin is a Distinguished Professor of biological oceanography and marine ecology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She holds the Elizabeth Hamman and Morgan Dene Oliver Chair in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation Science. She studies coastal and deep-sea ecosystems and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[1]

Early life and education

Levin grew up in Los Angeles.[2] She went on to complete her B.A. degree summa cum laude in Biology at Radcliffe College in 1975.[3] She joined the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for her graduate studies, earning a PhD in Oceanography from the University of California, San Diego in 1982. Her PhD advisor was Paul K. Dayton. Her dissertation was on tidal flat ecology and deep-sea sediments. Her postdoctoral advisors were Rudolph Scheltema and Hal Caswell at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Research

She joined North Carolina State University as an assistant professor in 1983. Levin then moved to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1992 as an associate professor. In the mid-1990s she became interested in deep-sea environments, including methane seeps and oxygen minimum zones.[4] These are the regions of ocean that were deprived of oxygen – between 200 and 1,000 metres deep with less than 90% of the surface oxygen. Her work also considers the structure of vulnerable ecosystems, wetland biotic interactions and larval ecology of coastal marine populations.[5] She has worked extensively in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans using a range of deep-sea equipment including submersibles, remotely operated underwater vehicles.[6] She has participated in over 40 oceanographic expeditions. She monitored cold seep sediments, checking the interaction of fauna with flow and reporting the first review of the different size groups of organisms.[7]

Together with her students, Levin has worked with a broad range of taxa, from microbes and microalgae to invertebrates, fishes and whales. Her recent research has emphasized 3 major themes:[8]

She served on the San Diego Wetlands Advisory Board. She was an editor of the journal Marine Ecology and founding editorial board member of the Annual Review of Marine Science. She joined the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission in 2000.[9] She reported massive single-cell xenophyophores in the Mariana Trench in 2011.[10]

In 2011 she was made the director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, which she led for six years.[11] She was made the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission Anton Bruun Memorial Lecturer. She gave the Sverdrup Lecture at the 2012 American Geophysical Union Meeting. She was made a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2013.[12] She co-founded the Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI), a group that seeks to integrate science, technology, policy, law and economics to advise on the management of resource use in the deep ocean in order to maintain the integrity of deep-ocean ecosystems.[13] In 2017 she founded the Deep Ocean Observing Strategy (DOOS), which outlines the requirements for future deep ocean observations.[14]

In 2016 she spoke at the 2016 United Nations Climate Change Conference. She is interested in the ethical challenges of mining the deep sea for metals. She was part of the 2018 World Economic Forum, speaking about the dangers of mining the deep sea bed.[15] [16] She was awarded the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) A.C. Redfield Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. and the Prince Albert 1 Grand Medal in Science in 2019. She has published over 280 papers that have been cited more than 30,000 times. In 2024 Levin was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.[17]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Lisa Levin shares her story United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. www.unesco.org. 2019-10-08.
  2. News: Lisa Levin. University of Bergen. 2018-10-11. en.
  3. Web site: Lisa Levin, deep-sea oceanographer. scicom.ucsc.edu. en. 2018-10-10.
  4. Web site: Lisa Levin on the Ecology of Cold Seep Sediments - ScienceWatch.com - Clarivate Analytics. Analytics. Clarivate. archive.sciencewatch.com. en. 2018-10-11.
  5. Web site: Lisa A. Levin Biography. Research Profiles. en. 2018-10-10.
  6. Web site: Dr. Lisa Levin HuffPost. www.huffingtonpost.com. en. 2018-10-10.
  7. Web site: Ecology of cold seep sediments: Interactions of fauna with flow, chemistry and microbes. Research Profiles. en. 2018-10-11.
  8. Web site: Levin Lab Web Site - Scripps Institution of Oceanography - Lisa Levin's Lab. levin.ucsd.edu. 2018-10-11.
  9. Web site: Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. www.ioc-unesco.org. en-gb. 2018-10-10.
  10. News: Massive single-celled organisms found in the Mariana Trench. Geere. Duncan. 2018-10-11.
  11. Web site: Scripps Biological Oceanographer Honored with Lifetime Achievement Award Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. scripps.ucsd.edu. en. 2018-10-11.
  12. News: 2013 OS Honorees - Ocean Sciences. 2013-12-08. Ocean Sciences. 2018-10-10. en-US.
  13. Web site: Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI). Research Profiles. en. 2018-10-10.
  14. Web site: Deep Ocean Observing Strategy. Research Profiles. en. 2018-10-10.
  15. Web site: Authors. World Economic Forum. 2018-10-11.
  16. Web site: Mining the deep seabed will harm biodiversity. We need to talk about it. World Economic Forum. 2018-10-11.
  17. Web site: 30 April 2024 . National Academy of Sciences Elects Members and International Members . 12 May 2024 . www.nasonline.org.