Chuck Gallegos is a phytoplankton ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. He received his undergraduate degree in Zoology from Duke University in 1973, and his Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia in 1979. He did postdoctoral training in Biological Oceanography at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Since joining the staff at SERC in the fall of 1986, his research interests have focused on primary production and population dynamics of estuarine phytoplankton, and optical properties of coastal waters.