David A. Siegel is presently a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geography and Chair of the Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Marine Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on aquatic ecosystems and their functioning on local to global scales. He has worked extensively in marine bio-optics, satellite ocean color remote sensing and oceanographic observations and numerical modeling for a wide range of problems from assessing marine biodiversity, quantifying the ocean’s biological carbon pump, measuring and modeling Giant Kelp spatial population dynamics, and understanding the efficacy of nearshore fisheries management scenarios. He is presently the Science Lead for NASA’ EXport Processes in the Ocean from RemoTe Sensing (EXPORTS) field campaign. He is a fellow of both the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  Dr.  Siegel received a B.A. in Chemistry and a B.S. in Engineering Sciences from University of California, San Diego (1982) and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Geological Sciences from the University of Southern California (1986 & 1988).