Jane Lubchenco

Undersecretary of Commerce and Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA) (since March 2009)

(OSU/Sol Neeman)

Why She Matters

Lubchenco, a scientific rock star whose record has been described as "path-breaking" and "stunning," heads NOAA, the agency in the Commerce Department that measures and regulates the oceans and air.

Lubchenco's confirmation added another environmental specialist to the list of scientists in high places in the Obama administration. After her confirmation, Lubchenco echoed Obama when she pledged to use the "best science as our guide,"to protect America's oceans and atmosphere.

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: Wayne and Gladys Valley Professor of Marine Biology and Distinguished Professor of Zoology. Oregon State University (1977 to 2009)
Hometown: Denver, Colo.
Alma Mater: Colorado College, B.A. (biology), 1969; University of Washington, M.S. (zoology), 1971; Harvard University. Ph.D. (ecology), 1975

Spouse: Bruce Menge
Office: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration1401 Constitution Avenue, NWRoom 5128Washington, DC 20230(301)713-4000
Web site

Path to Power

Lubchenco grew up in Colorado and went to Colorado College. After earning a bachelor's degree in 1969, she went to the University of Washington to earn a master's degree in 1971.

She did her doctoral work at Harvard. After completing her Ph.D. in ecology in 1975, she taught at Harvard for two years.

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In 1977, she joined the faculty of Oregon State University as a professor of marine biology.

Lubchenco and her husband, fellow marine ecologist Bruce Menge, shared a faculty position, which allowed them to balance work with having a family. "As far as we know that had never been done before," she told the New York Times.

The couple's son, Duncan Lubchenco Menge, is now a post-doctoral fellow at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.

Eventually, the shared faculty position became two separate jobs, and Lubchenco and Menge spent the next 30 years working in the same lab and jointly building a database on information about the Oregon coast.

In nearly three decades at OSU, Lubchenco became an academic darling, with what the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Jeremy B.C. Jackson called "some blockbuster papers, cited a thousand times." Indeed, the marine biologist has been ranked in the 99.5th percentile on a scale of the most cited academics.

Lubchenco's work focused on the interaction between humans and the environment, including biodiversity, climate change, sustainability and the state of coastal marine ecosystems.

In 1993, she won a MacArthur "genius" grant, which awards $500,000 to a handful of Americans judged to be the most creative in their fields. That's just the cherry on top of the long list of coveted prizes and awards for Lubchenco, which include a Pew fellowship, eight honorary degrees, the 2002 Heinz Award in the Environment, the 2003 Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest and more.

Lubchenco is also a member of some of the most prestigious scientific societies in the world, including the National Academy of Sciences and Britain's Royal Society. In 1997, she was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an honor she shares with Obama White House science adviser John P. Holdren.

In the late 1990s, Lubchenco served two terms on Bill Clinton's National Science Board, which advised the president and Congress and oversaw the National Science Foundation.

In December 2008, President Obama announced she was his choice to head the National Oceanographic and Atmosphere Administration. She was confirmed by the Senate on March 19, 2009. Lubchenco took a leave of absence from Oregon State University to head NOAA.

The Issues

NOAA both measures and protects the ocean and atmosphere, and Lubchenco may be the most prestigious scientist ever to lead the agency.

"That's exactly the right signal," said Andrew Rosenberg, who served as deputy director of NOAA's Fisheries Service under Bill Clinton. "It's saying that science agencies have a role in policy," he said. "It establishes NOAA as one of those key scientific agencies."

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Protecting Fish and Oceans

"America's fisheries [populations of fish caught commercially] are among the best-managed in the world," Grist.com reported. "But that's just because there's not much competition."

By all accounts, Lubchenco has her work cut out for her in regulating the increasingly problematic fishing industry. Many of the species Americans eat for dinner have been over-fished to the brink of extinction, and destructive practices such as trawling along delicate reefs can destroy entire ecosystems.

Still, environmentalists predict most fish populations could make a comeback with the right limits and government regulations. Congress has called for an end to over-fishing by 2011, but most fisheries are not on track to meet that deadline. Even for those species where fishing is regulated, limits are sometimes twice as high as what scientists recommend.

In fact, before she headed NOAA, Lubchenco criticized the agency for not acting aggressively enough to stop over-fishing. "Ocean conservation has lagged far behind land conservation," she told the New York Times.

Lubchenco supports catch shares, or a practice by which fishermen buy "shares" in fisheries that grow in value as the fish population recovers.

"The oceans have long been thought to be so vast and bountiful that they must be impervious to human depredation," Lubchenco told the Times. "The evidence is now overwhelming that even the immense oceans are depleted and disrupted. Turns out that oceans are more vulnerable - and more valuable - than we thought."

Climate Change

Lubchenco created a climate-change information service within NOAA to offer information about changing climate conditions "to help businesses, elected officials and regulators make good decisions on issues like where to put buildings or roads or wind farms." It is modeled on the National Weather Service, which NOAA also runs.

"It is no longer enough to know what the wind patterns were for the last hundred years," she told the New York Times.

"You want to know what they will be for the next hundred years - and they undoubtedly won't be the same. So there are huge opportunities to provide services to the country."

Lubchenco is comfortable living on the border between science and politics. She has advised the White House and the United Nations and has testified before Congress. She co-chaired a 2004 Oregon panel that advised the governor and recommended actions the state should take to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Green Economy

After her confirmation, Lubchenco said she suspected NOAA could play a key role in developing the green jobs that President Obama proposed in his February 2009 stimulus bill, especially in coastal areas, the Associated Press reported.

Science in the Public Sphere

Lubchenco believes that scientists should be involved in policy debates, and has encouraged her colleagues to promote innovative ideas beyond the rarified air of the scientific community.

In 1998, she founded the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program, which trains experienced scientists in ways to communicate to laymen, especially to politicians and the media.

She also helped organize a program to make details about marine conservation available to politicians and the public called the Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea. She was a founding director of ClimateCentral.org, a web site that offers what Lubchenco calls "credible" information about climate change.

The Network

Lubchenco is a past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as is Obama's White House science adviser, John P. Holdren. (Holdren also joins Lubchenco as a member of the elite club of MacArthur "genius" grant recipients.)

Bill Clinton appointed her to two terms on his National Science Board, which advises the President and Congress and oversees the National Science Foundation.

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