As director of one of the nation’s top-ten oceanographic research institutions and the country’s premier coastal research institution, Dr. Geller will head a staff of over 50 scientists conducting research in biological, physical, chemical and geological oceanography, and atmospheric sciences. Research at the MSRC and its institutes focuses on important global and regional environmental issues. The Center also prepares 125 graduate students and 35 undergraduates for careers in marine sciences and related fields. Dr. Geller will also oversee the Center’s $10 million budget.
Dr. Geller, a meteorologist who previously headed the University’s Institute for Terrestrial and Planetary Atmospheres, replaces MSRC Dean and Director J. Kirk Cochran, who has returned to full-time teaching and research.
Dr. Geller emphasized the importance of the Center’s undergraduate and graduate educational mission and said he wants the Center “to continue and improve upon its excellence in both global scale atmospheric and oceanic research, and its research into important regional problems that affect Long Island and the coastal areas of New York.”
Before coming to Stony Brook eight and a half years ago to be the first director of the Institute for Terrestrial and Planetary Atmospheres, Dr. Geller was chief of the Laboratory for Atmospheres at the National Aeronautic and Space Administration’s (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center, supervising some 350 scientists and other staff.
Dr. Geller has chaired the National Research Council Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Research and serves on the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate. He is co-chair of the project, Stratospheric Processes and their Role in Climate, of the World Climate Research Program. He has published approximately 70 articles in scientific journals and has been a Fellow of the American Meterological Society since 1984.
Dr. Geller received his doctorate in meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and held faculty positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciencies before joining NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
A native of Massachusetts, Dr. Geller lives in Port Jefferson.
