Virginia Armbrust named Director
New Director named
Ginger’s passion for teaching and her deeply collaborative approach to science exemplify core values of our college.
A marine microbiologist who studies phytoplankton – organisms that are responsible for 40 percent of the photosynthesis on the planet – has been named director of the University of Washington’s School of Oceanography.
Professor Virginia Armbrust, UW faculty member since 1996, will lead a school with 50 faculty and 100 staff. In fiscal 2009 the school’s faculty brought in $16 million in research grants and contracts, and in late 2009 the school was awarded a six-year, $165 million contract for construction of the regional cable component of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative.
Armbrust, co-director of the Pacific Northwest Center for Human Health and Ocean Studies, is known internationally for the development and use of molecular tools to study marine phytoplankton. Phytoplankton generate about half the oxygen humans breathe, form the base of the food web in the seas and remove the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Because of phytoplankton’s importance in mediating global warming, scientists want to understand how changes in the environment affect phytoplankton abundance.
Read More: .... by Sandra Hines (News and Information)
