COAST Annual Meeting
April 25 2013
CSU Chancellor’s Office, Long Beach
Panelists and Breakout Group Leader Biographies
Mr. William J. Douros
West Coast Regional Director
NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries
William J. Douros serves as the West Coast Regional Director for the
Office of National Marine Sanctuaries responsible for oversight of
nearly 13,000 square miles protected as national marine sanctuaries on
the west coast of the United States. From 1998 to 2005, Bill was the
Superintendent for Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. In
2005, Bill became the Regional Director. From 2010 through 2012 he
served as the Acting Deputy Director of the Office of National Marine
Sanctuaries, working much of that time from Washington, D.C.
Bill's past work and educational experience combines coastal policy,
marine science and operational management. He graduated with a
bachelor's degree in Environmental Biology from the U.C. Santa Barbara in 1981. Bill's graduate
work, conducted at Santa Cruz Island, examined intra-specific competition within extremely
high-density populations of black abalone (Haliotis cracherodii). He also evaluated
archaeological remains to determine how pre-historic predation on abalone may have affected
their population sizes. Immediately after graduating with a Master's degree in Marine Ecology
from University of California, Santa Barbara in 1985, Bill worked for, and for seven years
managed, Santa Barbara County's Energy Division, which regulates offshore oil and gas
development in that county.
Dr. Linda Duguay
Director
University of Southern California Sea Grant
Dr. Linda Duguay is the Director of the University of Southern
California (USC) Sea Grant Program and Director of Research for the
Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies at USC. She is an
Associate Research Professor in the Marine Environmental Biology
Section of the Biology Department in the Dornsife College of Letters
Arts and Sciences at USC. Dr. Duguay received her AB in Biology
from the University of Rhode Island (URI) and her MS and PhD in
Biological Oceanography from the University of Miami (UM),
Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. She has held
research faculty positions at the Marine Sciences Research Center of the State University of New
York at Stony Brook (SUNYSB) and at the Center for Environmental Sciences of the University
of Maryland (UMD), and has also held teaching positions at Southampton College of Long
Island University (LIU) and St. Mary's College, Maryland. Dr. Duguay served as a program
manager at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the Biological Oceanography Program and
the Office of Polar Programs in both the Antarctic and Arctic Sciences Programs.
Dr. Duguay's research interests are in plankton ecology of ctenophores, algal invertebrate
symbioses, and benthic ecology with a focus on disturbance in dredge material sites. She served
as the Chair of the NSF supported Centers of Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE)
Network. She served two terms as the Biological Oceanography Section secretary of the Ocean
Sciences (OS) section of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and served on the OS section
leadership team and chaired the OS nominations committee. She has served as a member of the
ASLO informal science education committee, and served as Treasurer of the Sea Grant
Association (SGA) and as a Board Member.
Dr. James Eckman
Director
California Sea Grant
Dr. James Eckman, a biological oceanographer and longtime senior
science administrator at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in
Arlington, VA, joined California Sea Grant in January, 2011 as its
new director. Eckman is familiar to many in the oceanographic
community, as he has led ONR’s flagship Marine Mammals and
Biological Oceanography Program, and its predecessors, for 13 years
prior to joining California Sea Grant. He has also led ONR’s
participation in the federal, multi-agency National Oceanographic
Partnership Program (NOPP), which coordinates the nation’s
oceanographic research and education programs and promotes partnerships among academia,
business and federal agencies. Prior to joining ONR Jim was a Professor at the Skidaway
Institute of Oceanography in Savannah, Georgia where he led diverse studies of seafloor biology
and ecology in environments ranging from the nearshore, to the shelf, and into the deep sea. For
the last 25 years, Jim has also participated in kelp ecology studies on the West Coast with
colleagues at the University of Washington. Jim received his Ph.D. from the University of
Washington in 1982.
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Ms. Phyllis Grifman
Associate Director
University of Southern California Sea Grant
Phyllis Grifman, Associate Director of the USC Sea Grant Program,
works with local, state, regional and federal organizations to fulfill
Sea Grant’s mandate to ensure that scientific research meets the
information needs of coastal and ocean managers and policy makers.
She coordinates Sea Grant’s research and outreach programs,
working at the intersection of science and policy to develop strategies
for prioritizing scientific investigation in the context of societal needs,
and to provide scientific results to local, state and regional entities in
formats most appropriate for their needs. Ms. Grifman is experienced with stakeholder-based
processes, having worked on the implementation of California’s landmark Marine Life
Protection Act, developing sets of marine protected area proposals in a collaborative, albeit
highly conflictual, environment. She serves as Vice Chair of the Channel Islands National
Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council and on the Board of the California Shore and Beach
Preservation Association. She has expertise in configuring and facilitating teams of scientific
experts, agency managers and personnel, and diverse publics.
Mr. William Lyte
Business Development Manager, Environmental Studies and Permitting
Burns & McDonnell
Mr. Lyte represents Burns & McDonnell, a global environmental,
engineering and construction services firm with a strong capability in
the marine sciences. A native of the Los Angeles area, he has a broad
spectrum of experience within the marine, industrial, and technology
sectors. This includes 25 years of business development and technical
experience with major U.S. consulting engineering firms, focused on
the San Pedro Bay and California ports and their goods movement
systems. Among his projects was the management of a three-year
federally funded satellite imaging analysis of the ports and Alameda
Corridor rail project, with team members NASA JPL, CSU Long
Beach and U.C. Santa Barbara. A follow-on three-year technology
commercialization project yielded GPS-based port truck tracking systems now in operation at the
San Pedro Bay ports. Mr. Lyte is a director and technology program lead for both the Harbor
Association of Industry and Commerce, and the California Marine and Intermodal
Transportation System Advisory Council (CALMITSAC), which also includes CSU Long Beach
(CITT) and the California Maritime Academy. Since 2008, he has also worked with the
Australian and U.S. federal and state agencies and utility companies involved in the marine
renewable energy field. He is currently working with CSU COAST to secure funding from the
State of California’s EPIC Program for marine biological sector research related to ocean energy.
Mr. Lyte is known nationally for his work in university-based innovation clusters, including (1)
with Caltech/JPL, City of Pasadena and County of L.A. (greentech and biotech), (2) CSU Long
Beach and Ports of Long Beach and L.A. (port, energy and air emissions technology) and (3)
Metropolitan Water District, CSU Pomona and the University of La Verne (water and energy
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technology). Mr. Lyte received a B.A. from U.C. Santa Barbara in Environmental Studies. His
focus was satellite remote sensing for environmental analysis.
Dr. S. Bradley Moran
Program Director, Chemical Oceanography Program, National Science Foundation
Professor of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island
Brad Moran is currently Program Director in the Chemical Oceanography
Program at the National Science Foundation (Intergovernmental Personnel
Act-rotator), and holds the position of Professor of Oceanography at the
University of Rhode Island. He recently served as Assistant Vice President
for Research at the University of Rhode Island, and was Co-Director and
Co-Principal Investigator of the National Science Foundation Experimental
Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) award to Rhode
Island. He has held leadership roles in a number of successful statewide
development initiatives, focused on promoting research, education, and
outreach related to energy, the environment, and sustainability. Dr.
Moran’s principal academic research interests include the application of uranium-series and
artificial radionuclides as tracers of marine geochemical processes, and fostering economic
development and public-private partnerships in energy and environmental research and
education. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and book sections, participated in
66 research cruises (over 1000 days at sea), and successfully competed for approximately $19M
in federal and state research funding. In 2007, he envisioned and implemented the nation’s first
Masters of Business Administration-Masters of Oceanography dual degree at URI, the “Blue
MBA”, and obtained unanimous faculty approval and endorsement from multiple private and
public stakeholders. He has held several adjunct academic appointments, served as visiting
scientist at a number of international agencies and institutes, and currently serves on the Editorial
Board of the Journal of Marine Research and as Editor of the Journal of Geophysical ResearchOceans. He received a B.Sc. in Chemistry from Concordia University, a Ph.D. in Oceanography
from Dalhousie University, and conducted postdoctoral research at the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution.
Dr. Shauna Oh
Associate Director
California Sea Grant
Shauna Oh is the Associate Director at California Sea Grant and serves in the
capacity as the research coordinator for the program. She coordinates with
the director in the scientific and policy aspects of research program
management, including the scientific review and evaluation for state and
federal research proposals and manages all graduate and postdoctoral
fellowship programs. Her responsibilities include working collaboratively
with state and federal agencies, and the state-wide academic and research
community to increase the state's research capacity and training the next
generation of marine and coastal scientists and policy makers.
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Shauna manages the following research and education initiatives for California Sea Grant: MPA
Baseline Programs- North Central, South and North Coast Study Regions, Collaborative
Fisheries Research West Program, Delta Science Fellowship Program and the California Sea
Grant State Marine Policy Fellowship Program. She is a member of the Coastal Sediment
Management Workgroup and is currently the chair of the Sea Grant Research Coordinators
Network. She earned her B.S. in biology with marine biology concentration at UCLA, a M.S. in
fisheries at Humboldt State University and a Ph.D. in fisheries at Michigan State University.
Dr. Phillip Taylor
Executive Director, Research Advancement & Federal Relations, Office of
Advancement
University of Southern California
I am currently at the University of Southern California as Executive
Director of Research Advancement and Federal Relations. Many in the
ocean science community know me from my tenure as a public servant in
the Division of Ocean Sciences (OCE) at the NSF. Recently, I served as
Program Director for Biological Oceanography, then as the Section Head
for Oceans, overseeing Chemical, Physical and Biological
Oceanography, Long-Term Ecological Research, and other program
elements. My research background is in community and population
ecology of marine systems. I’ve worked on coastal ecological systems;
more specifically, on temperate reef and intertidal ecosystems, coral reefs
and mangroves. I received my Bachelor’s and Master’s in Biological
Sciences, from UCSB and Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, respectively. My
Ph.D., in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, is from the UC Irvine.
As Director of NSF’s Biological Oceanography Program, with leaders in the ocean community, I
helped develop and oversee focused-research programs on climate change and ecosystems
(GLOBEC and JGOFS in U.S. Global Change Research Program), marine biotechnology, deepsea environmental science (RIDGE), bio-complexity in the environment, life in extreme
environments (LExEn), coupled natural and human systems in the environment (CNH),
environmental genomics, and coastal ecosystems -- many highly interdisciplinary in nature and
including both international and interagency partnerships. With the academic community, I led
the entry of OCE/Geosciences into NSF’s world-renowned Long-Term Ecological Research
Program (LTER) in partnership with Biological and Polar Programs. With ASLO, sister
agencies, and other NSF programs, I led the establishment of ASLO’s Ecological Dissertations
in the Aquatic Sciences (ECO-DAS) after contributing to the initiation and support of its
predecessor -DIALOG. As Section Head, I led the development the new Ocean Sciences
Broadening Participation programs (Post-Doctoral and Research Initiation Grants for underrepresented minority and women scientists), and helped anchor development the NSF’s diverse
Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability (SEES) portfolio, including Ocean
Acidification, Dimensions of Biodiversity, and Sustainability Research Networks, and RCNSEES.
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