Mark Abbott, PhD

About Mark Abbott

Mark Abbott served as the tenth President and Director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and is now President Emeritus. Prior to his service at WHOI, he was the dean of the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University from 2001 to 2015. He held a joint position at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory before joining OSU in 1988. He received a BS in Conservation of Natural Resources from the University of California, Berkeley and a PhD in Ecology from UC Davis.

Dr. Abbott was appointed by the President in 2006 to a six-year term on the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation and provides scientific advice to the White House and to Congress. Dr. Abbott served from 2008 to 2015 as vice chair of the Oregon Global Warming Commission, which led the state’s efforts in mitigation and adaptation strategies in response to climate change. He is a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s (NASEM) Ocean Studies Board and presently serves as vice-chair of the US Committee for the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. He served as chair of the NASEM Committee on Earth Science and Applications from Space, and member of the Committee on Future Directions for NSF Advanced Computing Infrastructure to Support US Science. He was president of The Oceanography Society and served as a member of MEDEA, which advised the federal government on issues of national security and climate change. In 2011, he received the Jim Gray eScience Award from Microsoft Research.

A third-generation Californian (though with deep family roots in New England), he and his wife, Jocelynn, have relocated to southern New Hampshire to be near their two adult daughters and three grandchildren. He is busy baking bread, and growing fruit trees, berries and grapes on their 5 acres.