Advisory Board and Editors Marine Biology
Fabiano Thompson
Oceanographer and Professor of Marine Biology of the Institute of Biology and SAGE-COPPE of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Our research group focuses mainly on marine microbiology.
Robert J Toonen
Research professor of Marine Biology at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology in the School of Ocean & Earth Sciences & Technology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Cemal Turan
Cemal Turan is a Professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at Iskenderun Technical University, Turkey.
His primary research interests include Marine Biodiversity, Fisheries, Alien Species, Molecular Ecology and Biotechnology.
Claudio Vasapollo
I am a marine biologist working as a fishery and benthic researcher at the Institute for Marine Resources and Biotechnologies (IRBIM) of the National Researche Council (CNR) in Ancona, Italy. I held my PhD in 2010 at the The Open University (Milton Keynes, UK) working at the Stazione Zoologica A. Dohrn of Naples (Italy) where I conducted a study on the spatial and temporal distribution of macro benthic assemblages associated to Posidonia oceanica seagrass and on several features of the plant itself. I got a Master degree in 2005 at the Polytechnic University of Marche after the Bachelor's degree in Marine Biology at the same university in 2004. I participated in several surveys at sea in the last years as well as to several diving expeditions in the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.
Scott Veirs
Oceanographer and bioacoustician facilitating the recovery of endangered regional icons of the Pacific Northwest (U.S.), particularly southern resident killer whales and Pacific salmon. I helped design and was the first major in the Earth Systems program at Stanford University, then earned a M.S. and PhD in Oceanography at the University of Washington. In 2003 I founded Beam Reach and taught ~50 undergraduates and recent graduates to ask and answer their own marine field science questions during 10-week field courses from 2005-2012. During the same period I helped create the Salish Sea Hydrophone Network -- orcasound.net -- which I continue to administer.
Balu Alagar Venmathi Maran
Dr. Balu Alagar Venmathi Maran, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Integrated Science and Technology, Nagasaki University, Japan
Dr. Balu Alagar Venmathi Maran is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Integrated Science and Technology, Nagasaki University, Japan. He previously served as an Associate Professor at the Borneo Marine Research Institute, Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), Malaysia, from 2017 to 2023. Before that, he was a Research Professor at Chonnam National University, Pukyong National University, and Kyungpook National University, South Korea (2015–2017) and a Scientist at the Korean Institute of Ocean Science and Technology, Busan, South Korea (2011–2015).
Dr. Venmathi Maran earned his Ph.D. in Marine Biology from Hiroshima University, Japan, and has 25 years of research experience in marine science and aquaculture. His expertise includes the taxonomy of marine fish parasites and the application of natural products for parasite control in aquaculture. Additionally, his research focuses on jellyfish biodiversity, harmful jellyfish toxins, and the potential of jellyfish collagen in cosmetics.
Currently, he is engaged in a marine science and technology project utilizing artificial intelligence in biological imaging. His significant contributions to research and innovation have been recognized with multiple awards and gold medals from UMS.
Dr. Venmathi Maran has authored over 100 research articles, 10 book chapters, and has edited three books published by Springer and UMS Press. As the principal investigator of several research projects, including an international project on marine biodiversity, he plays a key role in advancing marine research.
Additionally, he serves as an Academic Editor for PeerJ (Q1), International Journal of Microbiology (Wiley), and Diversity (MDPI) as a Guest Editor, along with several other scientific journals.
Olja Vidjak
Dr. Olja Vidjak's educational background includes an MSc in Oceanology (1998) and a PhD in Biology (2004) from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. She is a researcher at the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries (Croatia), with primary specialization in the ecology and taxonomy of marine zooplankton. Her research interests include the spread and management of aquatic non-native species and marine biodiversity conservation.
Khor Waiho
Researcher at the Institute of Tropical Aquaculture and Fisheries, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu. Dr. Khor Waiho obtained his Ph.D. in Aquaculture from Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (2016) and completed a 2-year postdoctoral (Biology, 2017-2019) at Shantou University, China. His current research focus includes the impact of climate change on crustacean growth and reproductive biology, population biology and fishery, and the aquaculture of economically important crustacean species.
Owen S Wangensteen
PhD in Biology, PhD in Chemistry. Lecturer in Marine Zoology at the Dpt. of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences, University of Barcelona
Research interests include: eukaryotic metabarcoding, marine molecular ecology, marine biodiversity, phylogeography, and bioinformatics.
Eric J Ward
I’m a statistician / quantitative ecologist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NOAA) in Seattle and an affiliate professor at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (SAFS) at the University of Washington. I work on a wide range of statistical problems – population dynamics, extinction risk, conservation genetics, fisheries stock assessment, reproductive success studies, etc. Most of the species I study are fish, but I also work with data from marine mammals, seabirds, and turtles. Much of my recent modeling interests have been pursuing applications of multivariate state-space time series and spatio-temporal models, isotope mixing models, and Bayesian model selection techniques.
Ingrid M Weiss
Professor for Biobased Materials at IBBS - Institute of Biomaterials and Biomolecular Systems, University of Stuttgart, Germany.
Past Head of Biomineralization at INM – Leibniz Institute for New Materials, Saarbrücken, Germany and Private Lecturer "Biochemistry" at the University of Regensburg, Germany.
Easton R White
I am a quantitative marine ecologist who uses mathematical and statistical tools, coupled with experiments and field observations, to answer questions in ecology, conservation science, sustainability, and ecosystem management. Most of my work is focused on marine systems, especially fisheries and spatial planning. I am a new Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of New Hampshire. Prior to joining UNH, I was a research associate at the University of Vermont with the QuEST program, a NSF-funded PhD traineeship focused on quantitative skills, interdisciplinary work, as well as diversity and inclusion.
I currently conduct research on assessing the effectiveness of protected area networks, improving species monitoring programs, and modeling socio-ecological systems in the context of fisheries. My work centers on how environmental variability, in particular rare events (e.g., hurricanes, COVID-19 pandemic), affects ecosystems and those that depend on them. My current work is funded through a NSF grant focused on interdisciplinary approaches to study coupled natural-human systems with Madagascar fisheries as a case study.