Kristina received her Juris Doctor from New York University School of Law with a focus on comparative and international law, and practiced admiralty. She is the author or co-author of over 150 publications, many with leading ocean scientists. Kristina works on the progressive development of public international law relating to the marine environment, with a focus on the high seas and international seabed area. Her many interests include ocean governance, shipping, fishing, deep seabed mining, as well as tools and technologies for advancing marine biodiversity conservation and sustainable use. To advance science-based progress, Kristina co-founded and currently serves on the boards of four initiatives: Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI), Global Ocean Biodiversity Initiative, Sargasso Sea Project and the High Seas Alliance and is a member of the Executive Planning Group of the UN Decade of Ocean Science.

Ken Buesseler is a senior scientist in WHOI’s Marine Chemistry & Geochemistry Department who first joined WHOI as a Joint Program student over 35 years ago. He is a marine radiochemist who studies the fate and distribution of radioactive elements in the ocean. Ken’s lab has been active in response to human-caused releases of radioactivity in the environment, tracking and monitoring radioactivity released into the ocean by the Fuksuhima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster, and from earlier sources such as Chernobyl, and atomic weapons testing at the Marshall Islands. 

Deborah Steinberg is  a biological oceanographer, her research interests include the role of zooplankton in cycling of carbon and nutrients and the food web of the ocean twilight zone. She has worked in a number of marine environments including coastal California, the Antarctic, the Sargasso Sea, the subtropical and subarctic North Pacific, the Amazon River plume, and the Chesapeake Bay. Steinberg earned her bachelor’s degree in aquatic biology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her doctorate from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Before coming to VIMS in 2001, Steinberg was a research fellow at UC Santa Cruz and a research scientist at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences. Deborah serves in numerous leadership positions in the broader oceanographic community. Her honors include the Sverdrup Award from the American Geophysical Union, and the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award–the highest honor the Commonwealth of Virginia bestows upon faculty at Virginia’s colleges and universities. Deborah has served as major advisor for doctoral and masters students at VIMS, and teaches courses on Biological Oceanography and Scientific Communication Skills.

Dr. Kakani Katija has a PhD in Bioengineering from the California Institute of Technology. As lead of the Bioinspiration Lab, Kakani and her group investigates ways that imaging can enable observations of life in the ocean. By developing novel imaging and illumination tools (e.g., DeepPIV and EyeRIS), automating the classification of underwater visual data using artificial intelligence (FathomNet, Ocean Vision AI), and integrating algorithms on vehicles (ML-Tracking) for robotic vehicle missions (e.g. Mesobot, LRAUV) to consistently and persistently observe ocean life, their efforts will increase access to biology and related phenomena in the deep sea.