Lee
Cooper
University of Maryland

Lee Cooper is a Research Professor at the Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory. He received his PhD in Oceanography from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1987 following undergraduate and graduate work at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of Washington.

His research interests include biogeochemical cycling in high-latitude ecosystem through the use of isotopic and elemental tracers. He has extensive polar shipboard research experience on all three current US Coast Guard icebreakers, including service as chief scientist coordinating several multidisciplinary research programs. He was also lead principal investigator for the Bering Strait Environmental Observatory, which involved local subsistence hunters in collection of samples and pilot-scale continuous seawater pumping operations in Bering Strait from Little Diomede Island.

Dr. Cooper has been active in working to improve collaborative bi-national research in the Russian Arctic and participates as the US representative in an International Arctic Science Committee working group that exchanges information with other arctic countries on multinational research activities in the Russian Arctic. He has been the lead author of more than 30 peer-reviewed publications and a co-author on a roughly equal number of other studies. He served as a member of a National Academy of Sciences study committee on designing an Arctic Observing Network that will improve capabilities for detecting climate change in the Arctic.

His public outreach efforts to explain climate change, particularly in high latitude regions, have included interviews for mass media outlets such as the CBS Evening News, News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Los Angeles Times, The Nome Nugget, USA Today, National Public Radio and the BBC.