Deborah Bronk, PhD

Deborah Bronk joined Bigelow Laboratory in February 2018 as its president and CEO.

She earned a Ph.D. in marine-estuarine and environmental sciences from the University of Maryland, and she has more than three decades of experience as a professor and an oceanographer.

Bronk has participated or led over 50 research expeditions, was elected president of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology & Oceanography and The Oceanography Society, directed the Division of Ocean Sciences at the National Science Foundation, and chaired of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents, which represented over a million scientists in the US, and the UNOLS Council, which supports the US research fleet of ships. She currently serves on the Maine Innovation and Economy Advisory Board, is the founder of the Maine Marine Science Consortium and co-founder and treasurer of the Research and Education Coalition for Ocean Sciences, which advocates for investments to keep US ocean science at the forefront of discovery and innovation. In 2025, MaineBiz named her Innovator of the Year.

Education

Ph.D., Marine Estuarine and Environmental Sciences, Horn Point Laboratory, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, June 1992.

B.S., Biology and Marine Science, University of Miami, Miami, FL, May 1986.

Research Interests

My research is all about NITROGEN! I am interested in ways that nitrogen controls the growth of the microscopic organisms at the base of the food web in open-ocean, coastal, and estuarine environments. My early work involved extensive method development with the goal of finding ways to measure how quickly phytoplankton and bacteria take up and release nitrogen, particularly the dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) fraction (compounds like urea or amino acids). I now use these techniques to address a host of questions relating to the release of DON from phytoplankton and zooplankton and subsequent reincorporation of DON as a nitrogen source for phytoplankton and bacteria. More recently I have started working on DON in effluent - it's surprising how cool waste water treatment plants can be!

Selected Presentations

Bigelow Café Sci - Bigelow's Next 50 - July 2024

Eggs and Issues - Bold Science for Our Blue Planet - May 2024

Mid-Coast Forum on Foreign Relations Presentation (audio only) - January, 2020

House Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife Testimony - February, 2019