Marine geophysicist Mike Coffin investigates interactions between the oceanic environment and the solid Earth. He was educated at Dartmouth College (AB) and Columbia University (MA, MPhil, PhD) in the USA. Ever since, he has pursued an international career that reflects the boundless nature of the global ocean. Mike has worked at Geoscience Australia (1985-1989), the University of Texas at Austin (1990-2001), the University of Tokyo (2001-2007), the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (2002-2003), the UK’s University of Southampton and National Oceanography Centre (2007-2010), and the University of Tasmania (2011-). He has also held visiting positions at Dartmouth College (1982), the University of Oslo (1992, 1996), Geoscience Australia (2000), France’s University of Strasbourg (2001), the University of Hawaii (2002), the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (2016-), and the University of Maine (2017-). From 2003-2005, Mike served as the inaugural chair of the Science Planning Committee of the International Ocean Discovery Program, the largest international program in the Earth and ocean sciences, and among the largest in any scientific discipline. From 2011-2015, he served as inaugural Executive Director of the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania. Mike has led or participated in 37 blue-water research expeditions, focusing mainly in the Southern, Pacific, and Indian oceans.
