President's Address
James J. McCarthy, Ph.D.
AAAS President; Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography, Harvard University
McCarthy's research interests relate to the regulation of plankton productivity in the sea and focus on regions that are strongly affected by seasonal and inter-annual variation in climate. He teaches courses on biological oceanography and biogeochemical cycles, marine ecosystems, and global change and human health, and oversees Harvard's program in Environmental Science and Public Policy. From 1982 until 2002, he was the director of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. McCarthy has served on and led many national and international groups charged with planning and implementing studies of global change, including as chair of the international scientific committee that establishes research priorities and oversees implementation of the International Geosphere - Biosphere Program; founding editor for the American Geophysical Union's Global Biogeochemical Cycles; co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Working Group II, which had responsibilities for assessing impacts of and vulnerabilities to global climate change for the Third IPCC Assessment; lead author of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment; and vice-chair of the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment. He received his Ph.D. degree from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and B.S. degree in biology from Gonzaga University.