President and Chief Executive Officer
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
7700 Sandholdt Road
Moss Landing, CA 95039
Phone: (831) 775-1814
Fax: (831) 775-1620
email: marcia@mbari.org
Marcia McNutt is a native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she graduated class valedictorian from Northrop Collegiate School in 1970. In 1973, she received a BA degree in Physics, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Colorado College in Colorado Springs. As a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, she next studied geophysics at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, where she earned a PhD in Earth Sciences in 1978.
After a brief appointment at the University of Minnesota, she spent the next three years at the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, working on the problem of earthquake prediction. In 1982, she joined the faculty at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At MIT, she was appointed the Griswold Professor of Geophysics and served as Director of the Joint Program in Oceanography and Applied Ocean Science and Engineering, a cooperative graduate educational program between MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
McNutt’s research ranges from studies of ocean island volcanism in French Polynesia to continental break-up in the Western U.S. to uplift of the Tibet Plateau. She has participated in 15 major oceanographic expeditions, and served as chief scientist on more than half of those voyages. She has published 90 peer-reviewed scientific articles.
McNutt’s honors and awards include membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She also holds honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Minnesota and from Colorado College. In 1988, McNutt won the Macelwane Award from the American Geophysical Union, presented for outstanding research by a young scientist. She has been honored as the Scientist of the Year from the ARCS Foundation (2003) and as the Outstanding Alumnus from the University of California at San Diego (2004). In 2007 she was awarded the Maurice Ewing Medal from the American Geophysical Union, presented for her significant contributions to deep-sea exploration. She is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the International Association of Geodesy.
McNutt served as President of the American Geophysical Union from 2000-2002. She also chaired the President’s Panel on Ocean Exploration, convened by President Clinton to examine the possibility of initiating a major U.S. program in exploring the oceans. She was Chair of the Board of Governors for Joint Oceanographic Institutions and is a Trustee of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership. She is the Chair of UNOLS (University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System). She also serves on numerous evaluation and advisory boards for institutions such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Stanford University, Harvard University, Science Magazine, and Schlumberger.