Director, National Sea Grant College Program

Dr. Leon M. Cammen is the Director of NOAA’s National Sea Grant College Program.  Since joining Sea Grant in 1990, Dr. Cammen has been a Program Officer for about half the state Sea Grant Programs and has served as Research Director.   From 2004 to 2010, he was the Program Manager for NOAA’s Ecosystem Research Program, a matrix program that includes the programs and laboratories from OAR, NOS and NMFS that deal with coastal and ocean ecosystem research.
Prior to joining Sea Grant, Dr. Cammen was a research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine.  His research interests include benthic ecology, the microbial loop, respiratory physiology, benthic-pelagic coupling, and ecosystem modeling.  Dr. Cammen has authored over 30 publications in the fields of marine ecology and biological oceanography
Dr. Cammen received his Ph.D. in Zoology from North Carolina State University in 1978.  He carried out postdoctoral research as a National Research Council Canada Fellow at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, as a NATO Fellow at the Institute of Ecology and Genetics of Aarhus University in Denmark, and at Skidaway Institute of Oceanography.  In addition, he has been a visiting scientist at Odense University in Denmark and a visiting professor at Aarhus University, teaching Marine Ecology and Microbial Ecology.