Awards & Honors

Dr. James A. Yoder, M.S. Oceanography URI 1974, Ph.D. Oceanography URI 1979, has been named a fellow of The Oceanography Society "for his innovative and visionary application of satellite ocean color technologies to interdisciplinary oceanography and his extraordinary service to oceanography."

On December 14, Rhode Island Sea Grant honored one of the global pioneers in coastal management, Professor Stephen B. Olsen, director of the Coastal Resources Center (CRC) at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography.

Professor Olsen received Rhode Island Sea Grant's Lifetime Achievement Award, only the 6th such award given over its 40 year history, for his outstanding leadership of CRC and contributions to Rhode Island Sea Grant. Under his direction since 1975, CRC has developed a global reputation for innovation and action. CRC has raised over $70 million since 1985 to support programs in coastal resources management on three continents in the developing world as well as in the United States.

The Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) announced on November 10, 2011, that Professor Barry A. Costa-Pierce, director of Rhode Island Sea Grant and professor of fisheries & aquaculture at the University of Rhode Island, has been elected as an AAAS Fellow.

The Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island celebrated the recent retirement of one of its longest serving and most distinguished professors last week with a day-long symposium in his honor.

URI GSO alumnus Dr. Jeffrey Book (M.S. 1998, Ph.D. 2007) has been awarded the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on scientists and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.     

As an honoree, Dr. Book traveled to Washington, D.C., in October to attend a recognition ceremony led by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

GSO graduate student Victoria Paris Sacks was awarded 1st place by the Montgomery-Watson-Harza Consulting Engineers/Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors for her Master's Thesis "Validation of Polyethylene Passive Samplers for the Detection of Emerging Contaminants" in the Master's Thesis category.  Her research, advised by Dr. Rainer Lohmann, focused on using a novel, low-tech method of measuring waterborne contaminants from personal care products, pharmaceutical, and industrial processes not previously known as pollutants (e.g. polybrominated diphenylethers, nonylphenols, and triclosan).  

Katherine Kelley, associate professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, has been named the recipient of the 2011 Hisashi Kuno Award from the American Geophysical Union. The award will be presented to Kelley at the AGU’s meeting in San Francisco in December.

Leslie Smith, a GSO PhD candidate, has been selected as one of three recipients of the 2010 Emerging Public Policy Leadership Award from the American Institute of Biological Sciences.

At the Annual Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, Dr. H. Thomas Rossby, a professor at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, received the 2009 Maurice Ewing Medal presented by AGU President Tim Grove.

Congratulations go to Sarah Corman, a GSO student in estuarine research who was the recipient of the Ketchum Award for best oral presentation atthe recent meeting of the New England Estuarine Research Society in Salem, MA, on April 2-4. Her talk was titled “Salt marsh mosquito ditches as habitat for nekton and implications for restoration.”