Dr. Phillip Levin

Phillip Levin is the Director of the National Nature Assessment. He is on loan to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from the University of Washington where he is a Professor of Practice in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs and the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.

Levin is a conservation scientist who is interested in bridging the gaps between theory and practice and between social and natural sciences. The main focus of his work is developing Interdisciplinary tools to inform conservation of marine, aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.

Prior to joining the USGCRP, Levin served as the Lead Scientist for the Nature Conservancy in Washington and was a Senior Scientist at NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, WA, USA. He served as the scientific lead of NOAA’s Integrated Ecosystem Assessment efforts in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem and Puget Sound. In the course of this work, he led the development of new analytical tools for characterizing ecosystem health and forecasting the cumulative effects of coastal zone management and climate change on marine ecosystems.

Levin received the Department of Commerce Silver Award and NOAA’s Bronze Medal for his work on marine ecosystems, and the Seattle Aquarium’s Conservation Research Award for his work in Puget Sound. He has published over 200 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters and technical reports, and edited the recent book, “Conservation of the Anthropocene Ocean: interdisciplinary approaches for nature and people”.

His work has been featured in such news outlets as NPR, PBS, The New York Times, the BBC, MSBNC, The Economist, among others. He served as President of the Western Society of Naturalists and served on numerous editorial boards and scientific advisory panels. He received his B.A. in Zoology from the University of Texas, his Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of New Hampshire in 1993 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina.