Post appointed director of URI Coastal Resources Center

NARRAGANSETT – The University of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Center at the Graduate School of Oceanography has a new director, effective in January: Anton Post.
Post, a senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., succeeds Stephen Olsen, who as founding director led the organization for 40 years. Olsen retired in 2012.
Post will direct operations at the center, which has an annual budget of $8 million and 22 employees in Rhode Island, as well as contract employees overseas. The center develops policies and programs to manage coastal zones in the U.S. and abroad.
“Dr. Post is a distinguished marine scientist with broad administrative experience in a number of positions,” Bruce Corliss, dean of the Graduate School of Oceanography, said in a statement. “I am delighted that he will join the faculty and provide leadership to the Coastal Resources Center as we build on the excellent program that has been developed over the years dealing with the management, policy and science of the oceans.”
Post called the appointment a privilege and said he will bring his marine microbial ecology expertise to bear on the research topics under consideration at the graduate school. In his new capacity, he also will be a URI professor of oceanography. He plans to focus in part on “emerging challenges” like rising seawater levels acidification and changing biodiversity, he said. His research expertise includes the biology of algae and its ecology, evolution and genomics.
Post also is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University and program director in the Division of Ocean Sciences at the National Science Foundation. He has served as a professor at Hebrew University, where he was a post-doctoral research fellow, and as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Amsterdam, where he received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees.

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