Denise Breitburg is a marine ecologist and Senior Scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. She earned her MS and PhD degrees from UC Santa Barbara. Denise’s current research includes studies of human influence on fisheries and food webs, environmental restoration and the ecology of gelatinous zooplankton. She is particularly interested in how multiple stressors affect coastal systems, and how factors that influence behavior, growth and survival of individuals scale up to community and ecosystem-level effects. She has served on the Chesapeake Bay Program Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee, the Governing Boards of the Estuarine Research Federation and American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, and NRC panels reviewing the Ocean Research Priority Plan and Corps of Engineers.