IMS Professional Researchers
In addition to faculty, several independent Professional Researchers are associated with IMS. Before formal appointments are initiated, by either the ORU or by individual faculty who have grant support for research projects, these researchers are evaluated in light of their research accomplishments, extramural funding, publications, potential interaction with faculty and students, and space and other resource commitments that must be made to support their work. Affiliated researchers are those individuals that utilize any of the ORU’s resources (space, seawater, equipment, etc) and/or individuals whose research falls within one of the seven research clusters supported by IMS. IMS only appoints affiliates in the ORU based on the individual researchers request to be associated with the ORU. Prospective researchers are reviewed first by the individual cluster group and then the IMS Advisory Committee before a letter requesting an appointment goes forward to the Dean. Research appointments and periodic evaluations follow the campus’s academic personnel procedures for the professional research series. Current IMS researchers include principal investigators in several disciplines who may serve the campus as adjunct faculty, educators, or lecturers.
Michael Beck, Researcher, Professor & AXA Chair in Coastal Resilience: Marine conservation, regional biodiversity planning, habitat restoration, marine proprietary rights.
David Boughton, Researcher/Fisheries Collaborative Program: Ecology and evolution of southern- and central-coast California steelhead; population and metapopulation dynamics; processes controlling habitat dynamics at intermediate and broad scales, especially in arid and montane systems; river restoration.
Caroline Casey, Assistant Researcher:
Megan Cimino, Assistant Research: Combines data from remote sensing technologies with biological observations to understand relationships bewteen living organisims and their habitat. Ultimate goal is a deeper understanding of the physical factors that drive species demographics, distributions and movements, which contributes to our understanding of ecosystem function, climate impacts and aids in conservation.
Miles Daniels, Assistant Research: Conducts research using coupled hydrodynamic and biological models in the California Central Valley to improve water management for protected salmon species.
Eric Danner, Associate Researcher/Fisheries Collaborative Program: Spatial patterns in ecology using coupled physical and biological models to understand how climate and water management interact to impact the diverse range of aquatic habitats in California’s Central Valley watershed
Peter Dudley, Assistant Researcher/Fisheries Collaborative Program: Adapting an existing salmon life-cycle simulation model for a case study focused on Sacramento River Winter Run Chinook salmon egg-to-fry life stages.
John Field, Researcher/Fisheries Collaborative Program: Understanding the spatial scales of recruitment processes, investigating the mechanisms that drive recruitment variability and the spatial distribution of forage species, ecosystem interactions between variable forage abundance and higher trophic level predators, improved methods for stock assessments, the reproductive ecology of groundfish, and the role of climate variability and climate change in all of these respective processes.
Elliott Hazen, Associate Researcher/Fisheries Collaborative Program: Marine ecology, birds and mammals, conservation biology: focusing on predator-prey dynamics and their response to environmental variability and global change.
Andrew Hein, Assistant Researcher/Fisheries Collaborative Program: Modeler and ecologist, with a diverse range of interests from animal movement to ecosystem ecology.
David Herbst, Researcher: Climate change and headwater streams of the Sierra, ecological effects of sediment in streams, salinity increase in salt lakes, acid mine drainage recovery in streams, meadow restoration, and studies of coastal tributary streams of the San Lorenzo and Pajaro River watersheds.
Rachel Holser, Assistant Researcher: Connecting ocean conditions to the behavior and success of marine mammal populations. Particularly interested in variability in behavior, what drives and maintains that variability, and what the ecological consequences are for a population.
Luis Huckstadt, Assistant Researcher: Understanding the role that large predators, particularly marine mammals, play in marine ecosystems, especially in areas more susceptible to human-induced climatic change such as upwelling and polar marine systems. Uses Biologging technologies and Stable Isotope Analysis to improve our understanding of the link between changing environments and the at-sea behaviors of marine top predators.
Rachel Johnson, Associate Researcher/Fisheries Collaborative Program: Fisheries and isotope ecology.
Joe Kiernan, Assistant Researcher/Fisheries Collaborative Program: How resource subsidies, environmental stochasticity, and biotic interactions affect the structure and function of riverine communities; particularly the relative and synergistic roles of physical habitat, hydrology, and food web structure in determining the growth and production of juvenile salmonids, and how these factors vary across both time and space.
Steven Lindley, Researcher/Fisheries Collaborative Program: Physical environment influences the dynamics of aquatic populations and communities, particularly involving Chinook salmon, steelhead and green sturgeon, in systems ranging from small coastal watersheds to the northeast Pacific.
Aaron Mamula, Assistant Researcher/Fisheries Collaborative Program: Human dimensions of natural resource management and policy. Fields of specialization include econometrics, water resource economics and the economics of fisheries, forestry and other renewable resource extraction problems.
Nathan Mantua, Researcher/Fisheries Collaborative Program: Climate variability, change, and predictability, climate impacts on aquatic ecosystems, and the use of climate information in resource management.
Barbara Muhling, Researcher/Fisheries Collaborative Program: Climate change impacts on marine and coastal fishes; Multivariate statistics and predictive habitat modeling; Links between environment, climate, ecology and physiology across life stages in marine fishes;Sustainable fisheries management under climate variability and change.
Peter Nelson, Associate Researcher: Field, laboratory, and theoretical studies of fisheries, fish behavior and physiology, coral reef biology, and marine ecology.
Shawn Noren, Research Scientist: Comparative physiological ecology of marine vertebrates.
Carrie Pomeroy, Research Scientist: Human dimensions of fisheries and fishing communities, and how environmental, regulatory, social and economic factors affect their function and well-being.
Gregory Rau, Researcher Recalled: Carbon / CO2 cycling, management , mitigation, and use; policy and societal action.
Colleen Reichmuth, Research Scientist: Psychological and physiological mechanisms related to behavioral flexibility in marine mammals.
Dale Robinsion, Researcher/Fisheries Collaborative Program: Retrospective analyses of historical environmental data sets and numerical model simulations, run in both hindcast and forecast modes; identification and characterization of critical marine habitat from remote sensing; and development and validation of oceanographic indices for use in California Current Integrated Ecosystem Assessments (IEAs).
Will Satterthwaite, Associate Researcher/Fisheries Collaborative Program: Investigate the ecology and management of Pacific salmon; use of quantitative techniques to understand population dynamics and the impacts of human activities upon them.
Marilou Sison-Mangus, Associate Researcher: Aquatic Microbiomes, Microbial ecology, Evolutionary biology, Biological Oceanography
Brian Wells, Researcher/Fisheries Collaborative Program:
Juan Zwolinski, Associate Researcher/Fisheries Collaborative Program: Automation of data processing of satellite-sensed oceanographic conditions and acoustic-trawl surveys for routinely predicting and surveying potential sardine habitat and rapidly estimating the abundances and distributions of coastal pelagic species and krill.
