Contact: Dane Konop                     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE       
          Michael Quigley                8/13/97
     

Stephen B. Brandt, a scientist, educator and science administrator, is the new director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich.

The laboratory, with a staff of 60 scientists and support staff and a 5.2-million dollar annual budget, conducts research into the sources, pathways, fates and effects of toxicants in the Great Lakes, natural hazards such as severe waves, storm surges and ice, Great Lakes hydrology and water levels, the regional effects of global change, and ecosystems and their interactions, including research into the causes, effects and techniques for ameliorating the impact of invasive aquatic species such as the zebra mussel.

"Brandt is uniquely qualified to head NOAA's Great Lakes lab because of NOAA's mission to understand the environments of both the oceans and Great Lakes, coupled with his experience as an administrator and scientist whose research specialty is the ecology and management of both marine and freshwater systems. He is also a former NOAA Sea Grant scholar and professor, so we're really just welcoming him back to NOAA," said James Rasmussen, director of NOAA's nationwide Environmental Research Laboratories.

Brandt had been director of the Great Lakes Center for Environmental Research and Education at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he was also a professor of biology.

He also has been an adjunct professor at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry at the State University of New York at Syracuse, a professor at the University of Maryland's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, Md., and a senior research scientist with the Division of Fisheries Research for the Commonwealth Marine Laboratories in Cronulla, Australia.

Brandt earned a bachelor's degree in zoology and mathematics and a master's and Ph.D. in oceanography and limnology from the University of Wisconsin.

The author of nearly 100 scientific papers and articles, Brandt is the president-elect of the National Association of Marine Laboratories and is the past president of the International Association for Great Lakes Research and a past member of the science Advisory Board of the International Joint Commission for the Great Lakes.

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