GCOOS Board of Directors
Short Bios
Dr. Cortis Cooper
Cort is an oceanographer in the energy technology company of ChevronTexaco. He is also a ChevronTexaco Fellow, one of 15 scientists and engineers chosen for their technical contributions to the company. The Fellows serve as consultants to upper management on technology issues and play a lead role in mentoring of technical talent within the company.
Cort has been actively involved in ocean research and development since receiving his BSc and MSc in Engineering at MIT in 1977. He later returned and obtained his PhD from the University of Maine in 1987. His research efforts have included leading the first comprehensive velocity surveys of the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico in the early 1980s and developing a hurricane current model whose results were later adopted as the industry standard. He has initiated and lead six Joint Industry Projects (JIP) one of them included 32 companies and another 25. These JIPs have successfully resolved major technical questions and established industry standards in some cases.
Cort has been a contributing author of three books, published 13 journal articles, and 2 and5 conference papers. He has served on a National Academy of Sciences committee and Board, and has been a frequent advisor to government agencies including NOAA, USGS, U. S. Navy, and the Minerals Management Service (MMS). In recognition of these latter efforts he has twice received MMS’s “Corporate Citizenship” Award.
Mark E. Luther, Ph.D.
Dr. Luther received his doctoral degree in Physical Oceanography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1982. Dr. Luther is an Associate Professor and is the director of the Ocean Modeling and Prediction Lab (http://ompl.marine.usf.edu) in the University of South Florida College of Marine Science. Dr. Luther's research involves the combination of real-time ocean observations with numerical models of ocean currents and processes and their application to various problems ranging from water quality in Tampa Bay to variability in large-scale ocean circulation and its relation to climate change. Dr. Luther is the author of numerous publications on various aspects of marine science. He has presented invited lectures in Austria, Canada, China, Egypt, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Sri Lanka, United Kingdom, and at numerous US institutions and conferences. He is active in national and international scientific societies and is a past Secretary of the American Geophysical Union Ocean Sciences Section. He serves or has served as a member of the World Climate Research Program Indian Ocean Climate Studies Panel, the World Ocean Circulation Experiment Indian Ocean Scientific Steering Committee, the National Research Council US National Committee for the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, the Tampa Bay Harbor Safety Committee Technical Subcommittee, and the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council Agency on Bay Management. From 1996 to 2004, he served as the US National Delegate to the International Association for Physical Sciences of the Ocean (IAPSO). He presently is Vice-Chair of the US Global Ocean Observing System Steering Committee (USGSC), which is assisting the federal government on development and implementation of the Integrated Ocean Observing System (see http://ocean.us), and is a member of the organizing committee of the National Federation of Regional Associations of the IOOS. He is Chair of the Marine Technology Society Florida Chapter and heads the Gulf of Mexico chapter of the Alliance for Coastal Technologies (http://act-us.info).
Robert “Buzz” Martin, Ph.D.
Dr. Martin has been with the Texas General Land Office’s (GLO) Oil Spill Prevention and Response program for 13 years where he is both the Director of Scientific Support and the State Scientific Support Coordinator (State SSC). As the State SSC, he is an emergency responder and the state’s lead in providing on-scene technical and scientific support to oil spill response activities. This includes serving as the state’s trajectory modeling team leader. As State SSC, he is instrumental in identifying protection priorities and in managing shoreline cleanup assessment teams (SCAT), aerial reconnaissance, and alternative countermeasure activities. As the Director of Scientific Support, he develops decision-support products for the spill response community. This includes managing the annual update of the Texas Coastal Oil Spill Planning & Response CD Toolkit, serving as the science & technology chairman for the Regional Response Team for Region 6 (AR, LA, NM, OK, TX), managing Environmental Sensitivity Index and Habitat Priority mapping projects, and conducting workshops to train spill response personnel. He also leads a joint project between the GLO and the Texas Water Development Board that, to date, has automated hydrodynamic models for three Texas bay systems to run unattended 24 hours a day in an effort to shave 1 to 2 hours off of the state’s trajectory response time. Dr. Martin has been heavily involved in operational ocean observations as the program originator and the GLO’s program manager for the Texas Automated Buoy System (TABS) since its inception in 1994.
Worth D. Nowlin, Jr.
Professor Nowlin is a Distinguished Professor of Oceanography at Texas A&M University and part time IPA to the National Data Buoy Center/NWS and to the Coastal Services Center/NOS of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He has served on many scientific advisory and management panels for ONR, NASA, NSF, NOAA, NRC, AMS, AGU and various UN agencies. He currently is a Councilor to the Texas A&M Research Foundation, chair of the U.S. GOOS Steering Committee, member of the governing committee for the National Federation of Regional Associations, and a member of the Management Committee of the World Meteorological Organization—Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission Joint Technical Commission for Oceanography and Marine Meteorology. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, Admiral in the Texas Navy, recipient of the Antarctic Service Medal of the U.S.A., recipient of a Certificate of Appreciation from the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO for his contributions to work on climate and the oceans and development of the Global Ocean Observing System, and twice recipient of the TAMU Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award for Research. He is actively working to develop the Global Ocean Observing System, the U.S. Integrated ocean Observing System, and the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System (GCOOS). His research interests focus primarily on meso- to large-scale ocean property distributions and circulation (particularly in the Gulf of Mexico and Southern Ocean), shelf circulation, long-term and systematic ocean observations, and research planning and management. He has been principal or co-principal investigator on more than 80 sponsored projects. He has directed 31 graduate student committees and supported 17 postdoctoral scholars. He has over sixty referred publications and numerous abstracts and reports.
Chris Oynes
Mr. Chris Oynes is the Regional Director for the Gulf of Mexico OCS Region of Minerals Management Service. As the Regional Director, Mr. Oynes manages the leasing of the OCS lands for oil, gas, and other mineral development, and supervises the regulation of operations and protection of the environment on those leases which involve 4,000 oil and gas platforms and 33,000 miles of undersea pipelines. This area covers the five Gulf Coast States. He manages a staff of 600, comprised of environmental scientists, biologists, geologists, geophysicists, and petroleum engineers.
Mr. Oynes received in 1998 a Presidential Award as a Meritorious Executive in the Senior Executive Service of the Federal Government. Mr. Oynes has received the two highest honor awards that the U.S. Department of the Interior bestows. Mr. Oynes holds a Juris Doctor Degree from George Washington University, and has 29 years of Federal Government experience with energy matters.
Alfredo Prelat
Alfredo E. Prelat is a Senior Technical Fellow for the Space and Intelligence Systems organization of The Boeing Company since January 2003. He is presently working on development of new remote sensing technologies as member of the Advance Concepts team for Mission Systems. He received his Master and Ph.D. (1974, Stanford University) degrees in geology. While earning his degree he was a Research Assistant in computer-Applications in Geology at the Kansas Geological Survey. He spent two years in Norway as a Research Fellow for the Royal Norwegian Scientific and Industrial Research Academy working on remote sensing and geomathematics. He spent six years at Stanford University as a Postdoctoral, Research Associate and Lecturer. At the Stanford Remote Sensing Laboratory he designed and applied image processing techniques to analyze satellite and airborne digital data for exploration of natural resources. He worked as a Technical Advisor for the United Nations in Asia and South America from 1977 to 1982 and for Bechtel and Unocal Corporation from 1983 to 1989.
In 1989 he joined Texaco as a Principal Scientist and Texaco Fellow. He set up a remote sensing laboratory based on sun workstation as a platform with an image analysis and geographic information system. The system was primarily designed to define prospecting areas for various groups in the company. In 1994 he designed and implemented the development of a hyperspectral sensor for exploration of natural resources and environmental assessment. The hyperspectral sensor known as TEEMS was flown over several areas in USA, Colombia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Indonesia. From 1999 to 2002 he was CEO, President, and Chief Technology Officer of Alto Technology Resources, a wholly owned subsidiary of ChevronTexaco. He directed all commercial activities for domestic and international operations and supervised the development of hyperspectral new technologies. In June 2002 he was recognized by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists with the prestigious award of Best International Paper on the use of hyperspectral remote sensing technology for environmental applications. In 2003 he received the Boeing Chief Technology Officer Professional Excellence Award. He is a former member of the National Research Council at the National Academy of Sciences.
Nancy N. Rabalais
Nancy Rabalais is the Executive Director and a Professor at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. Dr. Rabalais' research interests include the dynamics of hypoxic environments, interactions of large rivers with the coastal ocean, estuarine and coastal eutrophication, benthic ecology, and environmental effects of habitat alterations and contaminants. Dr. Rabalais is an AAAS Fellow, a Past President of the Estuarine Research Federation, a National Associate of the National Academies of Science, and past Chair of the Ocean Studies Board, National Academy of Science. She received the 2002 Bostwick H. Ketchum Award for coastal research from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and several research and environmental awards for her work on the causes and consequences of Gulf hypoxa. She earned a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1983.
Dr. Rabalais has been deploying oxygen meters in the Gulf of Mexico hypoxic area since 1989, along with nutrient and light meters in collaboration with LSU colleagues. She currently collaborates with Drs. Greg Stone and Gene Turner in the LSU/LUMCON WAVCIS/BIO2 mooring. She has also conducted several beta tests of oxygen sensors, with two currently underway. Dr. Rabalais has participated in several workshops on coastal observing, including the initial workshop for the Ocean.US Integrated Ocean Observing System, Arlie, Virginia, March 2002 and a subsequent meeting in Washington, D.C., March 2003. She was an invited participant for the NSF ORION Coastal Observatory Requirements Workshop, Washington D.C., January 2005. She was the Coordinator/Facilitator/Report writer for the ACT (Alliance for Coastal Technology) Workshop on Dissolved Oxygen Sensor Technology, January 2004. She has maintained linkages with observing systems and their development through her Ocean Studies Board roles (rotated off March 2005) and in her current membership of the Ocean Research Advisory Panel.
Don Roman
Don Roman, Captain USN-Ret., assumed duties as Director, Hydrographic Science Research Center in March 2003. During thirty years of naval service, Roman was deeply engaged in virtually all aspects of the Navy’s worldwide hydrographic and oceanographic programs. His key assignments included; Chief of Staff to the Commander, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command who is responsible for all Navy hydrographic and oceanographic survey operations, and Executive Officer of the Naval Oceanographic Office where Navy observational, hydrographic and oceanographic survey operations are executed. Other pertinent postings included Commanding Officer of Oceanographic Unit Two, Commanding Officer of the Naval Atlantic Meteorology and Oceanography Center, Norfolk, Va., Cruiser-Destroyer Group Three Oceanographer, Third Fleet Oceanographer and Atlantic Fleet Oceanographer. Throughout these tours, Roman was responsible for identifying and prioritizing oceanographic, hydrographic and meteorology research and operational program requirements. Roman holds a B.S. in Oceanography (minor in Meteorology), SUNY (1970) and a M.S. in Air-Ocean Sciences from the Naval Postgraduate School (1982).
Mike Spranger
Mike is Assistant Director for Extension and Education with the Florida Sea Grant Program and Assistant Dean for Environmental and Natural Resources Programs with the University of Florida/IFAS Extension. He provides leadership, program management and direction to UF/IFAS faculty who address state and regional needs of industries, agencies, organizations and citizens interested in marine, environmental and natural resource areas. He has over 25 years of professional experience in extension administration, planning, and evaluation. He has been involved in teaching and applied research at local, state, regional and national levels. He has coordination over 400 workshops and conferences on a variety of topics. Dr. Spranger has published 4 books and curricula guides, 12 referred journal articles, 4 technical papers and reports, 21 non-referred journal articles and 6 conference proceedings, and given well over 100 invited presentations and papers. Prior to his work at the University of Florida, he held positions at the University of Washington, Washington State University and University of Wisconsin.
He has served in a number of leadership roles nationally, including serving as chair of the National Assembly of Sea Grant Extension Program Leaders and President of the National Marine Educators Association. He currently serves as the Extension Representative to the Sea Grant Educator Network. He also serves as a Principal or co-Principal Investigator on a number of projects that deal with regional educational and outreach activities. These include the Gulf of Mexico–Center for Ocean Science Education Excellence Project, the Southeast Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing System Project, the Southeast Aquatic Nuisance Species Education and Outreach Network, and Fish Extension Project. His most recent activity associated with the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System (GCOOS) was to coordinate and chair the GCOOS Education and Outreach Formation meeting. He has a PhD. in Urban and Public Affairs from Portland State University; and Masters in Water Resource Management, Masters in Public Administration, and Bachelors in Political Science/History from University of Wisconsin.