Margaret Leinen

Margaret S. Leinen is an American paleoceanographer and paleoclimatologist. In the 1990s she served as a dean and the Vice Provost for Marine and Environmental Programs at the University of Rhode Island and was appointed as the head of the Geosciences Directorate of the National Science Foundation in January, 2000. She founded the Climate Response Fund, a non-profit focused on enabling better understanding, regulation and responsible use of climate engineering research, and served as its president. She also served as chief science officer for a startup company in green technology and climate change mitigation. She served the executive director of the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute Marine and Environmental Initiatives at Florida Atlantic University. In 2013, Leinen was appointed the 11th director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, as well as the dean of the School of Marine Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. She has also served as the U.S. Department of State science envoy for the oceans to Latin America and the Pacific.