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David Karl

David M. Karl, a microbial biologist and oceanographer in the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, has been selected to serve on the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Gulf of Mexico program advisory group. The 24-member NAS group will create a strategic vision and guide the program’s development and implementation.

Karl is the director of the Daniel K. Innouye Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education on the UH Mānoa campus. He was elected to NAS in 2006 and in April 2013, he received NASAlexander Agassiz Medal for “leadership in establishing multi-disciplinary ocean-observing systems, for decadal regime shifts in pelagic ecosystems, and for paradigm-shifting insights on biogeochemical cycles in the ocean.”

NAS Gulf of Mexico program

The $500-million, 30-year NAS Gulf of Mexico program was established as part of the settlements of federal criminal complaints against British Petroleum and Transocean Ltd. following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, which resulted in 11 deaths and 17 injuries. It was the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

The program will focus on human health, environmental protection and oil system safety in the Gulf of Mexico and the United States’ Outer Continental Shelf. It will fund and carry out studies, projects and activities in research and development, education and training, and environmental monitoring.

Serving for one year, the NAS Gulf of Mexico program advisory group will articulate the program’s mission, goals, and objectives—including preliminary thinking about metrics to measure its impacts—and outline how the program will operate in the first three to five years.

For more information, read the full text of the advisory group announcement, including a list of all 24 appointees.

—A UH Mānoa news release.

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