Marcia K. McNutt is the President and Chief Executive Officer
of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in Moss Landing,
California. She received a B.A. degree in physics, summa cum laude, Phi
Beta Kappa, from Colorado College in Colorado Springs. She studied geophysics
at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, where
she earned a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences in 1978. She spent three years working
on the problem of earthquake prediction at the U.S. Geological Survey
in Menlo Park, California, before joining the faculty at MIT in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. While at MIT, Dr. McNutt was appointed the Griswold
Professor of Geophysics. She also served as Director of the Joint Program
in Oceanography and Applied Ocean Science and Engineering, a cooperative
graduate educational program between MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution. In 1988, she won the Macelwane Award from the American Geophysical
Union for outstanding research by a young scientist. Dr. McNutt's
principal research involves the use of marine geophysical data to study
the physical properties of the earth beneath the oceans. Recent projects
include the history of volcanism in French Polynesia and how it relates
to broad-scale convection in the earth's mantle, continental break-up
in the western United States, and the uplift of the Tibet plateau. Her
research is both theoretical and field-based, using data she has collected
on nearly two dozen oceanographic expeditions. Dr. McNutt is
also the President-Elect of the American Geophysical Union.
