Marcia McNutt, most recently Director of the US Geological Survey, has been appointed the new, full-time Editor-in-Chief of Science. She will begin her tenure at Science on June 1. McNutt will take over the position from Bruce Alberts who decided to step down at the end of his five-year term.
McNutt received a B.A. degree in Physics, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Colorado College in Colorado Springs. As a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, she studied geophysics at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, where she earned a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences. She then spent three years with the USGS in Menlo Park, California, working on earthquake prediction.
Prior to her appointment as Director of the USGS, Dr. McNutt served as president and chief executive officer of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), in Moss Landing, CA. She began her faculty career at MIT where she became the Griswold Professor of Geophysics and served as Director of the Joint Program in Oceanography & Applied Ocean Science & Engineering, offered by MIT & the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She served as President of the American Geophysical Union from 2000-2002. She was Chair of the Board of Governors for Joint Oceanographic Institutions, helping to bring about its merger with the Consortium for Ocean Research and Education to become the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, for which she served as Trustee. She is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the International Association of Geodesy.
McNutt's honors and awards include membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She also holds honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Minnesota and from Colorado College. She was awarded the Macelwane Medal by the American Geophysical Union in 1988 for research accomplishments by a young scientist and the Maurice Ewing Medal in 2007 for her significant contributions to deep-sea exploration. She has served on numerous evaluation and advisory boards for institutions such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Stanford University, Harvard University, Science Magazine, and Schlumberger.
"Dr. McNutt will bring her unique expertise and broad interest in science to the journal at a time when science publishing is at a crossroads," said AAAS CEO Alan I. Leshner in a letter to staff announcing her selection for the position.