2004 Winner: Nicolas Gruber

Nicolas Gruber The 2004 Rosenstiel Award Winner is Dr. Nicolas Gruber, a biogeochemist at the University of California, Los Angeles. The Rosenstiel School is honoring Dr. Gruber for his groundbreaking research on how carbon dioxide produced by human beings, most notably through the burning of fossil fuels—ends up in the world’s oceans and eventually affects global climate. To understand climate change, Dr. Gruber has been studying the links between ocean circulation and the productivity of phytoplankton, among other factors. Since phytoplankton play an important role in the global carbon cycle, they affect the levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the ocean and atmosphere.

Dr. Gruber got his Ph.D degree in 1997, in Natural Sciences at the University of Bern, Switzerland.