Prof. Vladimir Koutitonsky

Physical oceanographer at the Institut des Sciences de la Mer de Rimouski (ISMER), Universite du Quebec a Rimouski until 2006, and now owner and senior oceanographer at Hydrosoft SA (www.hydrosoft.ca). Dr Koutitonsky's research interests are physical coastal oceanography, time series analysis and numerical modeling. Prof Koutitonsky was the instructor at the NF-POGO Visiting Professorship at Tunisia (2007) and is currently involved in capacity building and coastal consulting in North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, etc).

Prof. Sei-Ichi Saitoh

Prof Saitoh was an instructor on the CofE regional training course in Vietnam in Sept-Oct 2011.

Prof. Lisa Levin

Prof Lisa Levin is a professor and researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego and director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at Scripps. She studies the ecology of animal communities in marine sediments, particularly those of stressed environments, from the intertidal zone to the deep sea. Her research themes include adaptation to stressful environments, the study of food webs, ecosystem-level effects of plant invasions, and connectivity of coastal populations. She was a POGO Visiting Professor at the National Marine Information and Research Centre in Namibia from January to June 2011.

Prof. John Field

Prof. Field is Emeritus Professor and Deputy Director of the Marine Research Institute at the University of Cape Town, where he studied and obtained his PhD in quantitative marine ecology. Prof. Field is the current Chairman of POGO. He has served as a trustee and scientific adviser to the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, as President of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research, and chair of the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) and deputy chair of GLOBEC. He has also served on the advisory committee to the minister responsible for fisheries management in South Africa. He is best known for his work with Richard Warwick and Bob Clarke on analysing ecological community patterns, the philosophy behind Plymouth Routines in Multivariate Ecological Research (PRIMER), and for his joint paper on the “microbial loop” and the role of microbes in pelagic ecosystems. His interests include modelling foodwebs leading to fisheries, and the application of satellite remote sensing to understanding ecosystem variability, and ecosystem-based fisheries management.

Prof. Howard Roe

Prof. Roe is Emeritus Professor of the University of Southampton and was Director of Southampton Oceanography Centre from 1999-2005. His research interests include age determination and feeding in large whales; vertical distributions and migrations of calanoid copepods; copepod taxonomy; and many others. Author of 100+ papers, reports, books etc. Co-founder and Chair of POGO from 2003 to 2004; Coordinator for development of SOC; Chair of NERC board to develop and build RRS James Cook. Retired 2005 and currently a non-executive on the UK Marine Science Co-ordinating Committee, Executive Committee (i/c Science) Sargasso Sea Alliance; Revue Committee SEES Seoul National University; Council for Ocean Policy Studies, Japan. He is currently involved in the planning of NANO research projects.

Prof. Dr. Tom Malone

Dr Malone is Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. His research interests are phytoplankton ecology, coastal eutrophication, and role of science in formulation and implementation of ocean policy.  Dr. Malone delivered the graduation address for the 3rd and 4th years of the NF-POGO Centre of Excellence in Ocean Observations.

Prof. Dr. Karen Wiltshire

Prof. Wiltshire is the Vice-Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Head of the Wadden Sea Stationand the Biologische Anstalt Helgoland, home of the NF-POGO Centre of Excellence in Observational Oceanography (2013 onwards). Dr. Wiltshire is also Professor for Biogeomicrobiology of Jacobs University Bremen. Her research interests are induction of microalgal morphological variation, interactions of algae and predators, pigments in microalgae, multispectral fluorescence, detection of microalgae, microphytobenthos and the Helgoland Foodweb Project. Dr Wiltshire was present at the 2013 NANO Meeting in Berlin.

Prof. David Checkley

Professor of Oceanography at UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), Integrative Oceanography Division. Prof Checkley's research interests are long-term change in pelagic zooplankton and fish, including climate-biota interactions; role of zooplankton in the marine nitrogen cycle; effects of weather and air-sea interactions on plankton and fishes; ecology of marine zooplankton and fish; the biological pump, including the role of particles and plankton; ocean acidification; and instrument development. Dr Checkley invented CUFES (the Continuous, Underway Fish Egg Sampler - http://cufes.ucsd.edu/index.htm) and received awards and honors for his innovative technology solution. He was a POGO Visiting Professor at the National Marine Information and Research Centre in Namibia from January through June 2011.

Prof. Anthony H. Knap

Prof. Knap is the Director of Geochemical and Environmental Research Group (GERG) and Professor of Oceanography. He received his Ph.D. in oceanography in 1978 from the University of Southampton, U.K. Until recently he was Principal Investigator of two very long term ocean measurement programmes off Bermuda funded by the US National Science Foundation: The 58 year Station S and the 23 year Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Station. (BATS). His principal research interests are climate change, environmental science, atmosphere/ocean interactions, effects of chemicals on the marine environment as well as relationships between ocean health and human health. Prof. Knap recently was President, Director and Senior Research Scientist at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) established as Bermuda Biological Station for Research, Inc in 1903 (a US 501 C3 incorporated in 1926 in NY) for 25 years. Prof. Knap serves on expert panels for several international organisations and in January 2012 was appointed to the International Steering Committee for the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS).

Dr. Vivian Lutz

Dr Lutz a researcher and teacher at the Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo Pesquero in Argentina. Her research interest involve marine bio-optics. Dr Lutz was one of the instructors at the NF-POGO Visiting Professorship in Brazil (2006) and at the Regional CofE Brazil (2009).She is one of the founding members of ANTARES-CholoroGIN.

Dr. Venetia Stuart

Dr Stuart is the coordinator of the International Ocean Colour Coordinating Group (IOCCG) and is a research scientist at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography. Her research interests include the bio-optical properties of phytoplankton as related to phytoplankton photosynthetic pigments. She was involved in the first 3 years of the NF-POGO Visiting Professorship program, and has helped organise other training activities in collaboration with the IOCCG. Dr Stuart also attended the exploratory meeting in October 2010 that initiated the development of NANO.

Dr. Taka Hirata

Taka Hirata is currently an assistant professor at Faculty of Environmental Earth Sciences, Hokkaido University, Japan. He obtained his PhD (in Physics) in 2003 from Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. After obtaining his PhD, he worked as a bio-optical modeller at Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK as a post-doctoral researcher. After he worked in the field of the bio-optics and ocean colour remote sensing for 6 years, he moved to Hokkaido University in Japan and started marine ecological model. He is currently a principal investigator of Global Climate Observation Mission run by JAXA (Japanese space agency), and a collaborator of Climate Change Initiative run by ESA (European space agency).

Dr. Stewart Bernard

Dr Bernard is a researcher at the Council for Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa. Oceanographer, specialising in remote sensing of the ocean, Dr Bernard’s particular interests include multi-scale and -sensor marine observation, ocean colour, bio-optics and harmful algal bloom research. He is active in capacity building in Southern Africa, for example through participation in ChloroGIN, EAMNet and other programmes.

Dr. Silvana Rodrigues

Dr Rodrigues is an associate lecturer at the Universidade Federal Fluminense. Her research interests are developing and validation of chromatography methods and phytoplankton pigments as tracers to limnology and oceanography studies, among others. She belongs, as a researcher, to one recently created "National Institute of Marine Sciences", supported by the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology. Dr Rodrigues was one of the instructors at the Regional CofE in Brazil (2009).

Dr. Satsuki Matsumura

Dr. Matsumura was Director of the Research Planning and Coordination Division at the National Research Institute of Far Seas Fisheries (NRIFSF) of Japan. Prior to that, he was the Director of the Oceanographic Division of NRIFSF during 1992-96. His specialty is satellite oceanography and he led Japanese satellite ocean color remote sensing activities, since the inception of the ADEOS/OCTS program in 1988. He established and led the ocean color research team in Japan and was involved in the practical use of remote sensing data in the development of fisheries and its management. He has been instrumental in establishing an inter-institutional collaborative research program between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Fisheries Agency (FA) of Japan, which aims at undertaking joint satellite and ship observations by fishery research fleets. He has been a visiting professor in Thailand and Vietnam (NF-POGO VP and Regional CofE) and taught many young ocean color scientists.

Dr. Peter Frenzel

Peter Frenzel is a lecturer for palaeontology and project leader in the Institute of Geosciences, University of Jena, Germany. He works mainly in the fields of palaeoclimatology and environmental micropalaeontology with a focus on brackish water and marginal marine systems. This covers biological and palaeontological, i.e. historical approaches. His main taxonomic groups of research are Ostracoda and Foraminifera. Peter Frenzel is interested in coastal monitoring using meiofauna, in the reconstruction of palaeoclimatically and anthropogenically driven environmental change of coastal ecosystems, and in biodiversity questions concerning Ostracoda and Foraminifera. He is information officer of the International Research Group on Ostracoda (IRGO) and is supervising the PhD thesis of the NF-POGO alumnus Lailah Gifty Akita.

Dr. Murray Brown

Dr Brown grew up in the mangrove swamps of east Florida, and attended Duke University with high hopes of medical school and making lots of money. Forced by an accident to attend summer school, he opened the school catalog to the middle pages (where the staples are), and discovered the Duke Marine Lab (DUML). Fleeing dreary Durham, he spent a wonderful summer at DUML on the North Carolina coast, and never gave another thought to medicine or money. After kicking around for a couple years with odd jobs he went to the University of Copenhagen to work on a Licentiate (Ph.D.) in Marine Chemistry, obtained in 1975. Returning to the USA, he worked for 25 years with the US government, mainly as a marine program manager for the Interior Department in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). There he wrote the first "nearly GIS" system, called OPCPlot, for sharing digital files of operational marine data.  In 1992 he began assisting UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) with training sessions, working in the OceanPC project, a predecessor to today's OceanTeacher Academy (OTA). He retired in 1999 to work full time on OTA data management exercises, online courseware and face-to-face courses. He wrote/co-wrote most of the data management courses in the OTA catalog at http://classroom.oceanteacher.org and is the editor/author of http://www.marinedataliteracy.org a major collection of practical exercises. Dr. Brown taught Data Management for the NF-POGO Centre of Excellence between 2010 and 2013.He lives, works, fishes and grows tomatoes in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, USA.

Dr. Motoyasu Miyata

Dr Motoyasu Miyata taught oceanography as an NF- POGO Visitng Professor at the University of the Southern Pacific in Fiji (2005). He is presently adjunct professor at the Open University of Japan.

Dr. Milton Kampel

Dr Kampel is researcher and head of the Remote Sensing Division at the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais. His research interests are ocean colour, primary productivity, phytoplankton biomass variability, marine ecosystems monitoring and mapping, coastal management, among others. Dr Kampel was one of the instructors at the NF-POGO Visiting Professorship in Brazil (2006) and the coordinator of the Regional CofE Brazil (2009). He is also a member of ChloroGIN and Antares. He attended the exploratory meeting in October 2010 that initiated the development of NANO. He is tbelongs to the Executive Committe of ANTARES-CholoroGIN

Dr. Michael Lomas

Dr Lomas is currently a senior research scientist at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in the US. Before this current position, he spent nearly 12 years at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences where he was one of the lecturers at the NF-POGO Centre of Excellence in Observational Oceanography in Bermuda, teaching the Biological Oceanography module as well as a module on scientific writing. Dr Lomas' specialization is phytoplankton physiological ecology and ocean biogeochemistry. His current research involves: Dissolved organic phosphorus hydrolysis and assimilation by marine autotrophs and heterotrophs; relationships between environmental and phytoplankton community variability and its impact on the global carbon cycle; delineation of phytoplankton functional groups and determination of their physiological plasticity for inclusion in global ecosystem models; development of new techniques employing flow citometry as an 'investigative' tool in ocean sciences.

Dr. Maureen Conte

Dr. Conte is an associate scientist at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, adjunct professor in Brown University’s Department of Geological Sciences and an adjunct scientist at The Ecosystems Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory. Dr. Conte is Principal Investigator of the Oceanic Flux Program (OFP) time-series, a nearly 30-year time-series study of sedimentation patterns in the deep ocean. Her research interests involve: organic geochemistry, oceanic particle flux and biogenic aerosols. Dr Conte is one of the lecturers at the NF-POGO Centre of Excellence in Observational Oceanography in Bermuda.

Dr. Marie-Fanny Racault

Dr Racault is a scientist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory. She contributed to the teaching of the Ocean Colour applications module in the 3rd year of the NF-POGO Centre of Excellence. She is also involved in the EAMNet project, hosting a visiting fellow from Ivory Coast for 3 months at PML (Lazare Akpetou, also NF-POGO alumnus). She attended the exploratory meeting in October 2010 that initiated the development of NANO.

Dr. Kiyoshi Suyehiro

Dr. Suyehiro is the President and CEO of Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Management International, Inc. Chairman of POGO from 2009 to 2010. He led and participated in many marine seismological research works studying crustal and lithospheric structures in relation to plate subduction seismicity and island arc evolution in the western Pacific area. Dr. Suyehiro attended the exploratory meeting in October 2010 that initiated the development of NANO.

Dr. Juliet Hermes

Dr. Hermes is the manager and oceanographer of the South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON) Egagasini Node for Marine Offshore Systems in Cape Town, South Africa. She was an instructor at the NF-POGO Centre of Excellence in Observational Oceanography (1st year) and also a recipient of a POGO-SCOR visiting fellowship in 2008.

Dr. Joo-Hyung Ryu

Dr Ryu is Principal Research Scientist at the Korea Ocean Satellite Center of the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute (KORDI). His speciality is remote sensing and its various applications (ocean color, habitat mapping, sediments...). His group was involved in the launch of the world's first geostationary ocean colour observation satellite (GOCI). Dr Ryu was an instructor on the CofE regional training course in Vietnam in Sept-Oct 2011.

Dr. Joji Ishizaka

Professor at the Hydrospheric Atmospheric Research Center at Nagoya University, Dr. Ishizaka's research interests are Dynamics of Ocean Lower Trophic Level, Ocean Color Remote Sensing, Plankton Ecosystem. Dr Ishizaka was one of the instructors at the NF-POGO Visiting Professorship in Vietnam (2007).

Dr. Jesse Ausubel

Dr Ausubel is a director of the Program for the Human Environment at the Rockefeller University, Program Director and Vice-President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and adjunct faculty member of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Dr. Ausubel 's research interests include environmental science and technology and industrial evolution. Dr. Ausubel was instrumental in the development of the Census of Marine Life and participates in the creation of the Encyclopedia of Life, a Web site that will catalog all of Earth's 1.8 million known and named species. He also initiated the International Quiet Ocean Experiment programme that is currently under development under the auspices of POGO and SCOR.

Dr. Hemanaden Runghen

Dr. Runghen is an Associate Research Scientist at the Mauritius Oceanography Institute, which he joined in January 2008 as Research Assistant. He is interested in the study of ocean\coastal hydrodynamics, oil spill trajectory modelling using numerical models and environmental impact assessment. He also has experience in GIS and remote sensing.

Dr. Gerry Plumley

Dr. Plumley has held academic positions at the University of Georgia, the University of Alaska, the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, and the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI).  Dr Plumley is currently a visiting professor at the Department of Marine Science of the Chulalongkorn University. His research interests are based on algal biochemistry and molecular biology (e.g., HABs; genes involved in saxitoxin production; HPLC analysis of algal pigments). Dr. Plumley was the local coordinator of the NF-POGO Center of Excellent in Bermuda (2008 – 2012) and is the current coordinator of the program in Germany (AWI; 2013 - present). He was involved in the NF-POGO CofE Regional Training Programmes in Brazil (2009), Vietnam (2011), India (2012), the Philippines (2014) and Mexico (2015). He attended the NANO exploratory meeting in October 2010 and the NANO Annual Meeting in Berlin (2013); he also attended NANO Regional Workshops in Vietnam (2012), Senegal (2012), Tunisia (2013) and Mexico (2015).

Dr. George Wiafe

Dr Wiafe is a senior Lecturer at the Department of Oceanography and Fisheries of the University of Ghana. He is principal investigator to the following projects - Coastal Processes & Maritime Sensing Programme, DevCoCast, EAMNet, GCLME Productivity and Biodiversity and Biofuel supply chain management. He is member of steering committee GESAMP. Dr Wiafe's main research interests are application of remote sensing to coastal coastal resource and ecosystem management. He is involved in capacity building for Africa.

Dr. George White III

Dr George N White III is a scientist at the Fisheries and Oceans Canada at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography. Dr White is one of the lecturers at the NF-POGO Centre of Excellence in Observational Oceanography in Bermuda

Dr. Frank Muller-Karger

Dr Muller-Karger is a Professor and Director of the Institute for Marine Remote Sensing at the College of Marine Science, University of South Florida and the Principal Investigator of the CARIACO time series in Venezuela. His research interests include satellite remote sensing of marine primary production, large data sets, networking, and high-speed computing, importance of continental margins, areas of upwelling, river discharge, and coral reefs in the global carbon budget. Also a member of ChloroGIN and ANTARES.

Dr. Christo Rautenbach

Dr Rautenbach has a broad background in the Mathematical sciences. His studies include Mathematics, Physics, Applied mathematics, Process- and Coastal Engineering. He has experience in all of these fields and has particular interests in multiphase flow modelling, digital image processing and experimental research. Currently he is working in the Coastal engineering group at PRDW. Dr Rautenbach's daily responsibilities vary from project management to applied research. His main field of study is the Numerical modelling of coastal abiotic processes but extends to all related applied mathematical endeavours. Dr Rautenbach's personal interest is in coastal sediment transport, morphological numerical modelling and coastal vulnerability studies related to climate change. He also, supervises students in collaboration with various universities. Along with his academic endeavours they also do contract work for various clients and usually produce a comprehensive report as a result of their research and numerical modelling.

Dr. Charles Biney

Member of several committees, Dr Biney is the Acting Executive Director at the Volta Basin Authority (Burkina Faso). His area of expertise is Water Resources Management, Pollution of inland and coastal waters and Policy development.

Dr. Alexandra Kraberg

Dr. Kraberg is the co-ordinator of timeseries activities at the Alfred Wegener Institute and is also manager of the PlanktonNET database that provides georeferenced ecological and taxonomic information on phytoplankton and zooplankton. Her expertise are phytoplankton taxonomy and ecology, with a particular interest in long-term changes in coastal biodiversity including invasive and HAB species. Dr Kraberg has attended the 2012 NANO meeting in Ilhabela, Brazil.

Dr Li Zhai

Dr Zhai is affiliated with the Department of Oceanography, Dalhousie University. She was one of the lecturers at the NF-POGO Centre of Excellence in Observational Oceanography in Bermuda.

Dr Cesar Villanoy

Dr Villanoy has a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the University of Sydney, Australia.

Dr Aletta Yñiguez

Dr Yñiguez is a marine biologist and ecological modeler who graduated from the Division of Marine Biology and Fisheries, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami, Florida, USA in 2007. She was on a Fulbright Scholarship and a Maytag Fellowship during her Ph.D. at Miami. Her general research interest lies in population and ecosystem dynamics, and capturing these dynamics in models particularly to link individual or lower level characteristics to higher level properties of the system. She is interested in applying these models for scenario-testing and management issues. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Marine Science Institute (MSI), University of the Philippines and is heading projects on developing early-warning systems for harmful algal blooms in the Philippines, and modeling the linkages between fisheries and primary production. She is also building up the technical infrastructure and capability for the application of various optical/automated techniques in biological oceanography in the Philippines. Aletta is also concerned with promoting awareness of the marine sciences from high school students to educators in the Philippines.