Margaret Leinen, president of AGU

M. Leinen

Margaret Leinen is past president of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. She joined AGU as a member in 1974 and has served on its Board of Directors since 2010. A nationally distinguished oceanographer, she also serves as UC San Diego’s vice chancellor for marine sciences and dean of the School of Marine Sciences.
Margaret has extensive national and international experience in ocean science, global climate and environmental issues, federal research administration, and nonprofit startups. She is a researcher in paleoceanography and paleoclimatology. Her work focuses on ocean sediments and their relationship to global biogeochemical cycles and the history of Earth’s ocean and climate.
Prior to joining Scripps, her roles included vice provost for Marine and Environmental Initiatives and executive director of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, a unit of Florida Atlantic University; assistant director for Geosciences and coordinator of Environmental Research and Education at the National Science Foundation; founder and former president of the Climate Response Fund; and chief science officer of Climos, Inc., a startup focused on green technology for climate mitigation.
Margaret is a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Geological Society of America. She received her doctorate in oceanography from the University of Rhode Island, her master’s in geological oceanography from Oregon State University, and her bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of Illinois.