vailsymposium

Peter B. de Menocal is the eleventh president and director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. A marine geologist and paleoclimatologist, de Menocal’s research uses deep-sea ocean sediments as archives of how and why Earth’s ocean and climate have changed in the past in order to predict how they may change in the future.

Before assuming WHOI leadership, de Menocal was the Thomas Alva Edison/Con Edison Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. He served as Columbia’s Dean of Science for the Faculty of Arts & Sciences and founded Columbia’s Center for Climate & Life, a climate solutions research accelerator. He has received numerous awards and distinctions, including Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, AGU Emiliani lecturer, a Columbia Lenfest Distinguished Faculty award, and a Distinguished Brooksian award.

He earned a doctorate in geology from Columbia University and a master’s degree in oceanography from the University of Rhode Island; he was awarded an honorary doctorate from St. Lawrence University.