Cisco Werner, who has served as director of NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center since 2011, has been named as the agency’s new director of scientific programs and chief science advisor.
In that post, which he assumed on June 12, Werner will continue his work of managing a multidisciplinary scientific enterprise of basic and applied research on the living marine resources.
The geographic areas where the SWFSC conducts its work include the California Current, U.S. west coast watershed and parts of the North Pacific, the Eastern Tropical Pacific and the Antarctic.
Oceanic environment has been the focus of Cisco’s research, through numerical models of ocean circulation and marine ecosystems in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. His research has included studying effects of physical forcing on lower trophic levels and the subsequent effect on the structure, function and abundance of commercially and ecologically important species.
Prior to joining NOAA, Werner was the chair of the Marine Sciences Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and at Rutgers University , where he was professor and director of the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences.
From 2007-2017, he was co-editor in chief of the journal Progress in Oceanography.
Cisco earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, a master’s in oceanography and a doctorate in oceanography from the University of Washington.
