Plenary Speakers
Dr. Marcia McNutt, President and CEO of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Dr. Chris Field, Director of the Department of Global Ecology, Stanford University
Chuck Reed, Mayor of San Jose, California
Dr. Marcia McNutt, Opening Plenary Keynote Speaker
Dr. Marcia McNutt is one of the nation’s leading experts on global climate change and its effect on the planet’s oceans. She currently serves as the president and CEO of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), one of the premier marine research laboratories in the nation. As a scientist, McNutt knows first-hand the devastating impacts global climate change can wreck on the Earth’s marine ecosystems. But she also acknowledges the dramatic, and positive, changes that can result from increased sustainability and improved environmental practices.
McNutt’s research ranges from studies of ocean island volcanism in French Polynesia to continental break-up in the Western United States to uplift of the Tibet Plateau. She has participated in 15 major oceanographic expeditions, and served as chief scientist on more than half of those voyages. She has published 90 peer-reviewed scientific articles.
After a brief appointment at the University of Minnesota, she spent three years at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, working on earthquake prediction. In 1982, she joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At MIT, she was appointed the Griswold Professor of Geophysics and served as director of the Joint Program in Oceanography and Applied Ocean Science and Engineering, a cooperative graduate educational program between MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
McNutt served as president of the American Geophysical Union from 2000-2002. She also chaired the President’s Panel on Ocean Exploration, convened by President Clinton to examine the possibility of initiating a major U.S. program in exploring the oceans. She was chair of the Board of Governors for Joint Oceanographic Institutions and is a Trustee of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership. She is the chair of University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS). She also serves on numerous evaluation and advisory boards for institutions such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Stanford University, Harvard University, Science Magazine, and Schlumberger.
Marcia McNutt is a native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she graduated class valedictorian from Northrop Collegiate School in 1970. In 1973, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Colorado College in Colorado Springs. As a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, she next studied geophysics at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, where she earned a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences in 1978. She also holds honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Minnesota and from Colorado College.
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Dr. Chris Field, Labs21 Luncheon and Go Beyond Awards Ceremony Keynote Speaker
Dr. Chris Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, professor of Biological Sciences at Stanford University, and faculty director of Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. For most of the last two decades, Field has pushed the emergence of global ecology. His research emphasizes ecological contributions across the range of earth-science disciplines. Field and his colleagues have developed diverse approaches to quantifying large-scale ecosystem processes, using satellites, atmospheric data, models, and census data. They have explored local- and global-scale patterns of climate-change impacts, vegetation-climate feedbacks, carbon cycle dynamics, primary production, forest management, and fire. At the ecosystem-scale, Field has, for more than a decade, led major experiments on grassland responses to global change, experiments that integrate approaches from molecular biology to remote sensing.
Field's activities in building the culture of global ecology include service on many national and international committees, including committees of the National Research Council, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, and the Earth System Science Partnership. Field was a coordinating lead author for the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He is a fellow of the ESA Aldo Leopold Leadership Program and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He has served on the editorial boards of Ecology, Ecological Applications, Ecosystems, Global Change Biology, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Field received his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1981 and has been at the Carnegie Institution since 1984. His recent priorities include high-performance "green" laboratories, integrity in the use of science by governments, local efforts to reduce carbon emissions, ecological impacts of biofuels, and the future of scientific publishing.
Mayor Chuck Reed, Opening Plenary Welcome Remarks
Mayor Chuck Reed is the 64th Mayor of San Jose, California, elected on November 7, 2006, and sworn into office the following January. As Mayor of San Jose, Chuck is committed to improving the quality of life in the City, boosting the public's trust in local government, and fixing the City's structural budget deficit. The Reed Reforms, a comprehensive strategy to return honesty, fiscal responsibility, and open government to City Hall, are part of Chuck's vision to make the political process more accessible to the general public. In addition, Chuck's "Green Vision for San Jose," released in October 2007, presents a comprehensive 15-year plan for solving environmental problems and growing the local economy.
Mayor Reed received a master's degree in Public Affairs from Princeton University and graduated from Stanford Law School. After passing the bar, Chuck began working as an attorney in San Jose handling environmental, employment, land use and real estate law, and commercial litigation. Chuck's success as an attorney gave him the opportunity to devote time to serving the community. He began offering free legal advice to tenants in housing disputes and helping local non-profit organizations. Chuck has served on more than 20 boards, commissions, committees, and task forces.