CSSF’s User Committee provides a formal line of communication between ROPOS’s user community and CSSF. The Committee provides recommendations on operational policy and technical upgrades, and is supported by CSSF’s liaison, Paul Macoun (Assistant Manager of Science). Through bi-annual teleconference meetings, the CSSF User Committee provides CSSF with the critical feedback necessary to provide cutting-edge technology and services to support the ever-changing demands of Marine Science.
Sally Leys
Member
Dr. Leys is an Associate Professor & Canada Research Chair in Evolutionary Developmental Biology, Tier 2 at the University of Alberta. Her current research focuses on two areas: developmental mechanisms in basal metazoans and mechanisms of cell-cell communication in sponges. She uses molecular (incl. in situ hybridization) and cell biological (EM, video and light microscopy), and physiological techniques. She also uses a ROV and SCUBA to study the animals in their environment.
Anna Metaxas
Member
Anna Metaxas (Professor, Oceanography, Dalhousie University) holds a PhD in marine ecology from Dalhousie University. She is interested in the factors that regulate population dynamics of marine benthic invertebrates, and ultimately population connectivity, particularly larval dispersal, settlement and recruitment. For the last 20 years, her research has been evaluating the roles of larval behaviour and environmental characteristics in these processes, by using a combination of laboratory and field experimentation and mathematical modeling in habitats ranging from the shallow subtidal to the deep sea, and from the coastal waters of Nova Scotia to the Caribbean Sea and tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans. In addition to Dalhousie, she has done research at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Friday Harbor Labs of the University of Washington, and the Oceans Institute at the University of Western Australia. She has served on several national and international steering and scientific advisory committees (e.g. COML-ChEss, Ridge 2000, Endeavour MPA, InterRidge, Excellence Cluster Future Ocean) and is currently the chair of the Population Connectivity working group of INDEEP (International network for scientific investigation of deep-sea ecosystems) and the co-director of the Transatlantic Ocean System and Technology graduate program.
Peter Lawton
Member
Dr. Lawton is Head of the Gulf of Maine Crustacean Fisheries Section (SABS), Fisheries and Oceans Canada, he is also a member of the Centre for Marine Biodiversity and is the Chair of the Steering Committee for the Gulf of Maine Biodiversity Discovery Corridor. In connection with his earlier research on lobster fisheries ecology and management he was involved in numerous regional and international peer reviews of lobster stock assessments, and in joint research projects with international collaborators. He is an editor (since 1997) of the international Lobster Newsletter. Dr. Lawton has ongoing involvements in graduate student education, being associated with several masters and doctoral students currently involved in projects led by collaborators from the University of New Brunswick, Dalhousie University, and the University of Maine.
Mark Hannington
Member
Mark Hannington received a PhD. from the University of Toronto in 1989 and spent 15 years as a Research Scientist at the Geological Survey of Canada before coming to the University of Ottawa. His research combines the study of active volcanoes on the ocean floor, and associated metal-depositing hot springs ("black smoker vents"), with research on ancient volcanic environments that host many of the world’s largest and most valuable mineral deposits on land. During the last 25 years, Dr. Hannington and his students have participated on 29 research cruises in nearly all of the world’s oceans, including to submarine volcanoes on the East Pacific Rise, the Juan de Fuca Ridge, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Iceland, New Zealand, Tonga, Mediterranean, Antarctica, and Papua New Guinea. This work has focused on understanding the origins of base and precious metal deposits at submarine volcanoes and has led to the discovery of a number of previously unknown mineral deposit types on the seafloor. Recently, Dr. Hannington’s work has made important contributions to the understanding of natural loading of metals to the oceans from volcanic and hydrothermal sources, including metals with potential far-field environmental significance. His comparisons between modern volcanoes and ancient volcanic environments in Canada are also leading to new and improved models for land-based mineral exploration, including the recognition of new types of submarine epithermal gold deposits and high-sulfidation VMS. Dr. Hannington is the Goldcorp Chair in Economic Geology and the former chief editor of the international research journal Economic Geology (2001-2008). Economic Geology is one of the oldest scientific publications in North America and is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Dr. Hannington was only the 5th editor of the journal and the first to be located outside the United States.
Richard Dewey
Member
Dr. Dewey is the Associate Director, Science, at Ocean Networks Canada, University of Victoria. He holds a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Victoria and a Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of British Columbia. His research interests are coastal flows, mixing, turbulence, waves, and tides. Richard has conducted research throughout the Pacific from Japan to California, and along the B.C., Alaskan, and Arctic coasts. He has used a variety of profilers and deployed more than 50 moorings. He is author of the Mooring Design and Dynamics MATLAB package, and specializes in time series analysis.
Deborah Kelley
Member
Dr. Kelley the Associate Director of Science for the underwater cabled component of the National Science Foundation's Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) known as the Regional Scale Nodes (RSN). She has participated in over 30 blue water research expeditions and routinely use robotic vehicles that include the ROV's ROPOS and Jason; She has been on >50 dives in the three person submersible Alvin to depths of 12,000 feet. Most of her work focuses on hydrothermal systems at along the Juan de Fuca Ridge at Axial Volcano and the Endeavour Segment, and on the novel Lost City Hydrothermal Field that she helped discover in 2000.Lost City is a remarkable system with conditions never before seen in the marine environment. Here, limestone chimneys that rise over 180 feet above the surrounding seafloor, vent pH11 fluids rich in hydrogen and methane, as well as other abiotic hydrocarbons. The field has been active for at least 150,000 years.
Tom Kwasitschka
Member
Dr. Kwasnitschka received his PhD in Geology from the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Germany, and has been a researcher at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel since 2007. His research focuses on robotic exploration of deep ocean environments, particularly in the field of physical volcanology of seamounts, very deep explosive volcanism, and the temporal evolution of hydrothermal edifices. Further fields of his research are habitat mapping of cold and warm water coral as well as methane hydrate monitoring. He has pioneered the use of high-resolution 3D photogrammetric reconstruction of seafloor outcrops, has worked with imagery gathered by most major ROV and AUV systems and develops camera and lighting systems to collect such data. Tom also conducts research on the use of immersive virtual reality infrastructure to enhance telepresence at sea and visualize multimodal marine and seafloor data. He takes an active role in the popularization of such datasets throughout the international museum community.