Professor Bess Ward

• Professor of Geosciences. Chair, Department of Geosciences. Princeton University
• Microbial Nitrogen Cycling in Low Oxygen Ocean Waters

Ward obtained a degree in zoology with a focus in chemistry from Michigan State University, and a Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Washington.  She did a post doc at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and joined the research faculty there for five years. Ward then taught and did research in the Ocean Sciences Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz (joining as an assistant professor, leaving as chair of the department) before moving to the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University in 1998, where she has been department chair since 2006. Her current interests include many aspects of the nitrogen cycle, especially nitrification, denitrification and anammox, nitrous oxide cycling, phytoplankton nitrogen assimilation and new production. Her current programs involve everything from stable isotope experiments to the deployment of DNA microarrays to investigate microbial functional diversity in the N cycle.   She has spent a total of well over a year at sea, and has completed 6 field seasons in Antarctica.  She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the youngest and first female recipient (1997) of the G. Evelyn Hutchinson award, which is made annually to a “mid career” scientist in the field of limnology or oceanography by the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography.