Address to Congress

Dr. Jane Lubchenco

Oregon State University

The Honorable Dr. Jane Lubchenco is a marine ecologist focused on interactions between the environment and human well-being, including people’s responsibility for stewardship of the ocean and the planet. She has extensive experience in academia, government, philanthropy and NGOs. At President Obama’s invitation, she served for four years as the chief of the U.S. agency that oversees U.S. science, policy and management of activities affecting the ocean and the atmosphere (including fisheries, marine protection, climate change, weather forecasting, and more). She was the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and part of the President’s Science Team (2009-2013). Subsequently, she served as the first U.S. Science Envoy for the Ocean with the State Department (2014-2016). She is one of the “most highly cited” ecologists in the world with eight publications as “Science Citation Classics.” She received her PhD in ecology from Harvard University and was on the faculty at Harvard before moving to Oregon State University in 1978. She is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and other distinguished academies. She has received numerous awards including 20 honorary doctorates, the highest honor given by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Public Welfare Medal and the prestigious Vannevar Bush Award from the National Science Foundation. Since the mid-1990s, she has led a series of international working groups, symposia, and peer-reviewed publications to evaluate the data on fully protected, no-take MPAs (often called marine reserves). These early efforts led to the first international meta-analysis of marine reserve effects and the establishment of the Science of Marine Reserves Project, an international collaboration to synthesize and share MPA research with scientists and non-scientists alike. She co-founded three organizations that train scientists to be better communicators and engage more effectively with the public, policy makers, media, and industry.