Richard Coffin - Chief Scientist
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory,
Washington, D.C.
Richard is a co-leader of methane hydrate research for the Naval Research Laboratory. His research is on the biogeochemical cycling of methane in the shallow sediment and water column. The research team has experience working methane hydrate research in coastal waters around the world. There is strong experience in applying geophysics and geochemical parameters of the seafloor and their interaction with the ocean. Field work has been conducted off the mid Chilean Margin, Hikurangi Margin off New Zealand, Cascadia Margin, along the mid-Norwegian coast and on the Texas-Louisiana Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Jens Greinert – Co-chief Scientist
Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, The Netherlands
Jens is a senior scientist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ). His work as marine geologist took him from Germany to New Zealand, Belgium and the Netherlands. On the MITAS expedition, he will conduct bathymetric surveys with a 180kHz multibeam echosounder, analyze water samples for their methane content and keep an online measurement device for atmospheric methane running. Both on-board and land-based analyses will be carried out in cooperation with RCMG.
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Kelly K. Rose – Co-chief Scientist
National Energy Technology Laboratory,
Morgantown, WV
Kelly is a geologist and Research Lead with the Methane Hydrates Field Studies team at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Lab (NETL). Since 2006 she has worked on the sedimentology, lithostratigraphy, and geologic interpretation of marine and Arctic gas hydrate systems around the world. During the MITAS PS2009-09 expedition Kelly served as co-chief scientist for coring operations, sedimentologist and lithostratigrapher. She and the rest of the lithostratigraphic team are completing visual descriptions of the split core halves and collecting sediment subsamples for shipboard petrographic and XRD/XRF analyses to help constrain the geologic variability within the cores, including mineralogy, biogenic content, grain size, and sedimentary structures that may impact methane and methane hydrate distribution in the subsurface.
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Warren T. Wood – Co-chief Scientist
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Stennis Space Center, MS
Warren has been a geophysicist with the Naval Research Laboratory in Stennis Space Center, MS since 1993. He holds a BS degree in Physics from the U. of Michigan, and MS and PhD degrees in Geophysics from the U. of Texas at Austin. His specialties include high resolution reflection seismic data processing and inversion, and his research interests include geophysical and hydrological aspects of seafloor phenomena, particularly marine methane hydrate systems. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists.
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Jonathan Borden
U.S. Geological Survey
Woods Hole, MA
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Layton Bryant
Milbar Hydro-Test, Inc.
Shreveport, LA
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Matthew Cottrell
University of Delaware
Newark, DE
Matt is a marine microbial ecologist who works on a variety of topics related to microbial processes and microbial diversity in aquatic systems. His most recent work in the Arctic Ocean has focused on the role of different types of chemolithoautotrophic metabolism that allow microbes to survive winter darkness below the ice during the Arctic winters. Other Arctic work looked at microbes capable of harvesting light energy directly to supplement their growth on organic substrates. During the MITAS 2009 cruise Matt worked with Dave Kirchman examining rates of microbial uptake and respiration of important intermediates in carbon cycling in sediments and collecting microbial DNA for examining key genes in methane degradation. Matt is an Associate Scientist in the School of Marine Science and Policy at the University of Delaware.
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Sarah Doty
U. S. Geological Survey
Menlo Park, CA
Sarah assisted Tom Lorenson with shipboard analysis of organic geochemistry samples. She also served as part of the piston core processing team. With a background in field biology, she kept an eye out for marine life while on the ship. At home, she studies carbon stock in forests for the CarbonTree Conservation Fund.
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Mara Dougherty
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Washington, D.C.
Mara is a Chemistry graduate student at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests include using compound specific radiocarbon analysis to better understand the microbial consortium responsible of removing methane at the sulfate methane transition zone. This work is coincides with the methane hydrate research conducted at the Naval Research Laboratory and lead to her participation in the MITAS expedition.
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Ross Downer
Milbar Hydro-Test, Inc.
Shreveport, LA
Ross is the General Manager of Milbar Hydro-Test where he has been employed since 1998. Milbar is a company whose primary business is in the pipeline service industry. Ross received his BS in Ocean Engineering and MS in Chemical Oceanography from Texas A&M University. His role in the MITAS Expedition was to provide and operate the piston coring system as well as assist with the vibra coring equipment. Milbar developed the specialized piston coring system which utilizes a 3,000 lb core head and high strength core barrels allowing samples to be collected in the extreme environments associated with methane hydrates.
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Chad A. Greene
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX
Chad is a graduate student in Acoustics and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Chad's thesis will be based on the results of the experiments on sediment samples collected during the MITAS expedition.
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Leila J. Hamdan
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Washington, D.C.
Leila is a microbial ecologist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and my research centers on metabolic function and community composition of estuarine and marine bacteria. She received her doctorate from George Mason University and was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Research Associate prior to joining the Naval Research Laboratory. Her goals for the MITAS expedition were to study the biogeochemical factors controlling the fate of sedimentary methane and the composition of microbial communities in Arctic sediments and waters influenced by methane.
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Patrick Hart
U. S. Geological Survey
Menlo Park, CA
Pat is a geophysicist with the Coastal and Marine Geology Team of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, CA. He received his BS and MS degrees in Geophysics from Stanford University in 1980. His primary field of research is high-resolution marine seismic reflection profiling and has participated in many research cruises in the Arctic. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists.
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Scott Hiller
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
San Diego, CA
Scott is a Senior Electronics Technician, working for the Shipboard Technical Support Group, from Scripps Institution of Oceanography (San Diego). He has worked for Scripps for 18 years and spent 14 years in the U.S. Submarine Service as an Electronics Tech prior to working for Scripps. He is currently under contract to the U.S. Coast Guard providing technical science support to the USCGC POLAR SEA for 2009. He has spent the last year installing and testing the electronic science systems for the ship.
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Edna Hutten
Renard Centre of Marine Geology at Ghent University
Belgium
Edna is a volunteer at Renard Centre of Marine Geology at Ghent University, and joined the MITAS cruise on behalf of RCMG to support methane analyses, water sampling and bathymetric data editing. Since her initial work within a Russian-German project in the Sea of Okhotsk, she participated in a number of research cruises to support sampling and lab analyses.
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Joel Johnson
University of New Hampshire
Durham, NH
Joel is an Assistant Professor of Geology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of New Hampshire. Joel has sailed on several gas hydrate expeditions as a marine sedimentologist since 1999. During this expedition he described the core stratigraphy, determine the sediment composition, and interpret the depositional environment of the recovered sediments. This effort will provide the science party with information on the host sedimentary environment for methane and methane hydrate in the sediments.
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Christopher Kinoshita
University of Hawaii
Honolulu, HI
Chris is studying methane hydrate stability at the Hawaii National Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii.
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David Kirchman
University of Delaware
Newark, DE
David is the Harrington Professor of Marine Studies at the University of Delaware. He is a microbial ecologist, interested in the role of bacteria and other microbes in the carbon cycle. Much of his work uses both traditional and molecular methods for examining the degradation of organic material, including methane. He received a B.A. in Biology from Lawrence University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University.
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Stefan Krause
Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR)
Kiel, Germany
Stefan is a Ph. D. student of Tina Treude at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) in Kiel, Germany. His general research interest is in microbe-mineral interactions. Stefan’s goals for the MITAS expedition included: the identification of microbially produced carbonates as an indicator of arctic methane seepage activity and history, analysis of sedimentary carbonate system details as prerequisites for microbially induced carbonate precipitation, and identification of relevant microbial groups influencing the arctic sedimentary carbonate system.
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Randolph K. Larsen
St. Mary's College of Maryland
St. Mary's City, MD
Randy is an associate professor of analytical chemistry at St. Mary's College of Maryland. His specialty is in the measurement of trace organic compounds. On this research trip he measured organic biomarkers in the sediment column to help understand the microbial processes involved in Arctic carbon cycling.
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Tom Lorenson
U. S. Geological Survey
Menlo Park, CA
Tom is a research geochemist with the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, CA. He has been interested in gas hydrate research in the Arctic since 1990. His research focus has been the identification and history of methane from gas hydrate dissociation due to the climatic warming in the Arctic region.
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Curt Millholland
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Washington, D.C.
Curt has worked as an inorganic chemist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. for the last two years. While onboard the POLAR SEA, Curt performed sulfide analysis of pore waters that are collected from the sediment samples.
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Rebecca Plummer
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Washington, D.C.
Rebecca is an analytical chemist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. She works in NRL’s stable isotope laboratory, and will be analyzing samples from the MITAS cruise for stable carbon isotope ratios of methane, DIC, DOC, TIC, and TOC. In addition, she operated the GC-FID on board to measure methane and ethane concentrations.
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Jennifer L. Presley
National Energy Technology Laboratory/National Interest Security Company
Houston, TX
Jennifer is a technical writer and editor working for the National Interest Security Company in support of the Methane Hydrates Research & Development Program at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Lab (NETL). During the MITAS expedition, she served as the data librarian, responsible for the collection and logging of all data generated during onboard laboratory studies. She also recorded and continues to maintain the catalogs created for the numerous cores and hundreds of samples collected during the expedition. Jennifer continues to serve as the data librarian and assists with expedition publications and the project website. Prior to supporting NETL’s hydrates program, she sailed in support of India’s National Gas Hydrate Program’s Expedition 01 and coordinated the publication of the post-cruise initial reports volume. Jennifer also sailed on numerous expeditions with the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program as a shipboard publications specialist.
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Allen Reed
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Stennis Space Center, MS
Allen is a geologist within the Marine Geosciences Division of the Naval Research Laboratory, Stennis Space Center, MS. He studies sediment properties (hydraulic and thermal conductivity), geotechnical properties (sediment strength and rheology) and stratigraphic layers of shallow sediments. He uses high-resolution computed tomography images to evaluate stratigraphy, predict hydraulic sediment properties in sand and evaluate gas bubble shape and growth in muds. He also uses bulk measurements of acoustic velocity, density, resistivity and magnetic susceptibility to determine sediment stratigraphy and predict sand-mud intervals.
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Koen de Rycker
Renard Centre of Marine Geology at Ghent University
Belgium
Koen works as an engineer at the Renard Centre of Marine Geology at Ghent University, Belgium. He is in charge of sub-bottom profiling with a 3.5 kHz system. Koen has worked on RCMG surveys of lakes in Chile, Venezuela, Russia, Spain, and France. He has also performed surveys in the Mediterranean, North Sea, Black Sea, and Pacific Ocean.
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Suni Shah
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Washington, D.C.
Suni is a postdoc researcher at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory working at the AMS facility. She is interested in the lipid biogeochemistry of the Alaskan shelf. She collected multicorer and piston core sediment as well as filter surface seawater for total lipid extraction and analysis back at the lab.
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William Sielak
Nuiqsut Community Observer
Nuiqsut, Alaska
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Joe Smith
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Washington, D.C.
Joe is a geochemist with the Marine Biogeochemistry Section at the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC. During the MITAS 2009 expedition he analyzed sediment pore waters for inorganic anion concentrations (SO4-2 and Cl-) using ion chromatography and conducting XRD/XRF analysis to identify major mineral phases in the solid phase. Results of these analyses will be integrated with the MITAS-PS2009-09 dataset to investigate how fine-scale geology and geochemistry influences sulfate diffusion and methane flux rates in shallow sediments overlying methane hydrate bearing strata.
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Tina Treude
Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR)
Kiel, Germany
Tina is an Assistant Professor for Biological Oceanography at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) in Kiel, Germany. Her general research interests include geomicrobiology, biogeochemical reactions in marine sediments, microbe-mineral interactions, deep sea ecosystems, and extreme marine environments (cold seeps, whale falls, and hydrothermal systems). Her research interests/goals during the MITAS expedition included modeling temperature-triggered gas hydrate dissociation and correlated biogeochemical reactions in sediments, measuring microbial methane consumption in gas-hydrate bearing sediments (Anaerobic oxidation of methane), and carbonate precipitation correlated to anaerobic oxidation of methane.
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Preston S. Wilson
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX
Preston is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and a research professor at Applied Research Laboratories, The University of Texas at Austin. His interests are the acoustics of multiphase materials of the ocean bottom, such as sediments, gas-bearing sediments, and sea grass. The applications of this research range from ecological studies to naval mine hunting.
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Brandon Yoza
University of Hawaii
Honolulu, HI
Brandon is currently working as an Assistant Researcher at the Univeristy of Hawaii, Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. His background is in Microbiology and Biotechnology and is interested in investigating aerobic methanotrophic bacteria communities within the sediment water interface.
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U.S. Coast Guard Marine Science Operations Team
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ENS Chris Verlinden
Chris is the Marine Science Officer aboard USCGC POLAR SEA. Originally from Portland, OR, he graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in 2008 where he majored in Marine and Environmental Sciences. Chris leads all science operations onboard.
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ENS Jenn Hom
Jenn is the Assistant Marine Science Officer. From Woodbridge, VA, she is a recent graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy where she majored in Operations Research and Computer Analysis. Jenn recently reported aboard POLAR SEA in June of 2009.
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MSTC Jeff Wenciker
Jeff is the lead Marine Science Technician. He is from Kansas City, MO and is the lead petty officer onboard and is also in charge of daily weather briefs. Jeff also recently reported aboard in June 2009.
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MST2 Daniel Smith
Dan is from Alberta, Canada and is the lead rigger on board and in charge of all deck operations. Dan is also a Coast Guard qualified diver.
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MST3 Zach Spence
Zach is from Michigan and is the hazardous material officer on board and is also a qualified rigger. He eventually wants to be a smoke jumper and enjoys sailing.
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MST3 Nikole Tetreault
Nikole is from Raleigh, NC and is in charge of all property and inventories, as well as the science budget. She joined the Coast Guard after graduating from high school and wants to study zoology.
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ABOUT NETL
Deepwater Technology
