Sant Chair of Marine Science Emerita
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian

Dr. Nancy Knowlton is a coral reef biologist who spent much of her career at the Smithsonian, initially in Panama at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and later at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. She was also a professor at Yale and the founding director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego. She is the author of Citizens of the Sea and former Editor-in-Chief of the Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal. She is a recipient of many honors, including election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the International Coral Reef Society’s Darwin Medal. In 2014 she helped launch #OceanOptimism on Twitter to shine a spotlight on what is working in ocean conservation.