NMFS Northeast Fisheries Science Center

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CMER partnerships are designed to bring together teams of agency and faculty experts to focus on problems in basic biology, economics, analytical chemistry, fish and shellfish physiology, food safety, remote sensing, and many other areas.

"Richard Brill is a specialist in physiology of turtles and large apex predators such as bluefin tuna," said Dr. Kenneth Sherman, NOAA Fisheries' director of CMER programs in the Northeast U.S. "At Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences he will carry out research on those species' physiological responses to environmental cues."

NOAA Fisheries runs CMER programs to encourage faculty and students to work on research problems relevant to the agency's mission of managing living marine resources. CMER programs also serve as training grounds for marine scientists. The Virginia CMER program is intended to foster interactions between students and faculty at a minority serving university (Hampton University) and the established marine science program at VIMS.

Brill will serve as a member of the VIMS faculty while he leads the CMER program. He will teach and advise students at VIMS and at Hampton University.

Brill earned a Ph.D. in the Department of Physiology (1979) at the John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii. He served as Scientific Director of the Pacific Gamefish Foundation from 1980-82, and worked at the NOAA Fisheries Honolulu Laboratory from 1982-94. From 1994-98 Brill was a senior fellow in the Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research at the University of Hawaii. He returned to NOAA Fisheries as a research fishery biologist in 1998, and remained in that post until assuming the Virginia CMER directorship earlier this month.

Established in 2000, the Virginia CMER program is the newest of NOAA Fisheries' four CMER programs. Other CMER programs are located in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Jersey.