University of New England has appointed Barry A. Costa-Pierce, Ph.D., its new Henry L. & Grace Doherty Endowed Chair of Marine Sciences, director of the Marine Science Education and Research Center, and director of the Center for Land-Sea Interactions.

Costa-Pierce most recently served for 10 years as director of the Rhode Island Sea Grant College Program, where he managed over $40 million of research funds and led a diverse team of research, education and outreach professionals. He also served concurrently as professor of fisheries and aquaculture at the University of Rhode Island, where his Ph.D. students worked on life cycle assessments and modeling environmental and social carrying capacity issues in aquaculture.

Costa-Pierce has a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Hawaii and an M.Sc. in zoology from the University of Vermont. He is a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists. Costa-Pierce is also chair-elect of the board of directors for the international charity, Aquaculture without Frontiers.

Costa-Pierce has lived and worked in over 20 nations in Asia-Pacific, Africa, Latin and South America on a wide range of ecological and social issues in marine and freshwater ecosystems, and in both industrial and community-based aquaculture and fisheries. For 10 years he was a research scientist for the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management (ICLARM) in the Philippines and Indonesia, and he subsequently directed the ICLARM Africa office in Zomba, Malawi. He has authored over 150 publications, including 25 peer-reviewed books and monographs in aquaculture, fisheries and aquatic ecosystems, and sustainability science, including "Ecological Aquaculture: The Evolution of the Blue Revolution" (Oxford University Press). In July 2012 Springer Science will release the nearly 15,000-page "Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology" edited by Nobel Laureate Robert A. Meyers, who selected Costa-Pierce to write chapters in and edit the volume on "Ocean Farming and Sustainable Aquaculture Science and Technology." For the past 13 years he has been an international editor of "Aquaculture," the top science journal in the field, where he makes decisions on 300 aquaculture science papers each year from throughout the world.

Costa-Pierce is an award-winning educator, having led graduate and undergraduate programs throughout the United States at the University of Rhode Island, University of California San Diego, California State Polytechnic University, University of Oregon, University of Minnesota, and internationally at the University of Malawi in Africa, and Padjadjaran University in Bandung, Indonesia. In 1998 he was selected as the “Student Recommended Faculty in Global Sustainability” at the University of California Irvine, where he was recognized for his outstanding impact on undergraduate education. In 2011, he was selected as the University Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Sao Paulo State University in Brazil.

In his roles at UNE, Costa-Pierce will lead the university’s marine sciences research and scholarship efforts to develop acclaimed, student-centered undergraduate and graduate programs in marine coastal ecosystems and forge strategic partnerships with the coastal innovation economy. He will lead teams across UNE to develop interdisciplinary scholarship and marine research that produces the next generation of coastal leaders who develop new coastal economies, contribute to marine environmental stewardship, social-ecological wisdom, global community and diversity, and human health and wellness. He notes, “We will be educating and positioning UNE’s marine science graduates for the next generation of opportunities in this burgeoning field, so they will not be simply looking for jobs, but rather creating them.”