Dr. Paul Shepson Named SoMAS Dean
Stony Brook University Provost Michael A. Bernstein, in a memo distributed to the SoMAS community, is happy to announce that “our national search for a new Dean of the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences has ended in resounding success.”
Dr. Paul B. Shepson, the Jonathan Amy Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, and of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University, and currently the Division Director for Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences at the National Science Foundation, will become the new SoMAS Dean on July 2, 2018.
The Provost’s memo continues:
A native of Elmira, New York, Paul Shepson is, in his own words, a “child of the Finger Lakes.” He obtained a B.S. in Chemistry from the State University of New York — College at Cortland, and a Ph.D. in analytical/atmospheric chemistry from Pennsylvania State University. Paul worked for Mobil Oil Corporation in 1982, before moving to a research position in the Atmospheric Sciences Research Laboratory of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina), from 1983 to 1987. In 1987, he was appointed Professor of Chemistry at York University in Toronto, where he was also made Director of the York Centre for Atmospheric Chemistry. Seven years later, Paul joined the faculty at Purdue University. For five years, between 2008 and 2013, he was Head of the Purdue Department of Chemistry, and was also the founding Director of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center. Paul’s research group focuses on issues related to the exchange of gases between the surface and the atmosphere in a variety of environments – the Arctic and other coastal marine environments, urban environments, and mid-latitude forests. His research approaches involve the construction of unusual platforms from which to study the atmosphere, including tethered balloons, ice-tethered buoys, and the utilization of his group’s aircraft, the Airborne Laboratory for Atmospheric Research (a Beechcraft Duchess Light Twin). Paul is passionate about understanding and communicating about climate change and its impacts and related constructive problem solving. He is an accomplished aviator with instrument, commercial, and multi-engine ratings. The author and co-author of over 215 scientific publications, Paul is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2015, Paul received the American Chemical Society Award for Creative Advances in Environmental Science and Technology.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Paul Shepson as our new Dean of the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University.
SoMAS and Provost Bernstein recognize the enormous efforts of Dr. R. Lawrence (Larry) Swanson, who has served as interim Dean since May of 2016 and kept us on course. Thank you Larry!
Many thanks as well to the search committee, co-chaired by Dr. Henry Bokuniewicz (of SoMAS) and Dr. Fotis Sotiropoulos, Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and including Josephine Aller, Steve Beaupre, Edmund Chang, J. Kirk Cochran, Darcy Lonsdale, Deborah Lowen-Klein, Scott McLennan, Teresa Schwemmer, David Taylor, Harold Walker, Laura Wehrmann and Tom Wilson.
Additional coverage of the announcement is available on InnovateLI’s February 12th article by Gregory Zeller, “Stony Brook Lands Climate-Change Ace For SoMAS.”
