Donald Boesch
| Donald Boesch | |
|---|---|
| President of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science |
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In office 1990–2017 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
November 14, 1945 New Orleans, Louisiana |
| Alma mater |
Tulane University (B.S.) College of William & Mary (Ph.D.) |
| Profession | Biologist, Environmental Scientist |
| Website | Professor |
Donald Boesch (born November 14, 1945) is a professor of marine science and, from 1990 to 2017, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. From 2006-2017, he concurrently served as Vice Chancellor for Environmental Sustainability for the University System of Maryland. In 2010, he was appointed by President Barack Obama as a member of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling to investigate the root causes of the blowout at the Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico.
Boesch was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he grew up in the Ninth Ward and experienced the flooding resulting from Hurricane Betsy. He attended Holy Cross High School and Tulane University, in that city, earning a B.S. in Biology. Boesch completed his Ph.D. in biological oceanography at the College of William of Mary in Virginia, after which he was a Fulbright-Hays Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Queensland in Australia.
Boesch returned to the United States in 1972 and served as a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. In 1990 he moved back to his home state as the first Executive Director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, where he was responsible for building its marine center at Cocodrie, Louisiana, and two research vessels, the Pelican and the Acadiana. During this time, he was also a professor of marine science at the Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.
Boesch has conducted research on coastal and continental shelf ecosystems along the Atlantic Coast, the Gulf of Mexico, eastern Australia and the East China Sea. He has published two books and nearly 100 papers on marine benthos, estuarine and continental shelf ecology, wetlands, effects of offshore oil and gas development, nutrient over-enrichment, environmental assessment and science policy. While in Louisiana, he initiated the research that documented the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone and identified its principal causes.
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