Deborah Bronk, PhD


President and CEO
Senior Research Scientist
Phone: +1 (207) 315-2567, ext. 115
dbronk@bigelow.org

For media inquiries, please contact: communications@bigelow.org



Deborah Bronk joined Bigelow Laboratory in February 2018 as its president and CEO.

She earned a Ph.D. in marine-estuarine and environmental sciences from the University of Maryland, and she has more than two decades of experience as a professor and an oceanographer. During that time, she has conducted more than 50 research cruises and field studies in freshwater and marine environments that stretch from pole to pole.

Dr. Bronk also serves as president of The Oceanography Society and chairs the UNOLS Council, the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System. In 2020, she was recognized as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, for her substantial research advances on the marine nitrogen cycle and for her leadership in the ocean science research community.

Previously, Dr. Bronk was the Moses D. Nunnally Distinguished Professor of Marine Studies and department chair at Virginia Institute of Marine Science within the College of William & Mary. She also served as division director for the National Science Foundation’s Division of Ocean Science and as president of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography.


Education

Ph.D., Marine Estuarine and Environmental Sciences, Horn Point Laboratory, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, June 1992.

B.S., Biology and Marine Science, University of Miami, Miami, FL, May 1986.


Research Interests

My research is all about NITROGEN! I am interested in ways that nitrogen controls the growth of the microscopic organisms at the base of the food web in open-ocean, coastal, and estuarine environments. My early work involved extensive method development with the goal of finding ways to measure how quickly phytoplankton and bacteria take up and release nitrogen, particularly the dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) fraction (compounds like urea or amino acids). I now use these techniques to address a host of questions relating to the release of DON from phytoplankton and zooplankton and subsequent reincorporation of DON as a nitrogen source for phytoplankton and bacteria. More recently I have started working on DON in effluent - it's surprising how cool waste water treatment plants can be!


Selected Presentations

Bigelow Café Sci - Bigelow's Next 50 - July 2024

Eggs and Issues - Bold Science for Our Blue Planet - May 2024

Mid-Coast Forum on Foreign Relations Presentation (audio only) - January, 2020

House Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife Testimony - February, 2019