Travis Courtney, PhD

Professor Travis is a biogeochemist and ecosystem ecologist and the PI of the BERG lab. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez and an affiliated researcher of the Caribbean Coral Reef Institute. Travis earned his B.S. in Geology and Environmental Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where his research focused on the effects of temperature and ocean acidification on the growth rates and calcite stable isotopic composition of a tropical sea urchin in the lab of Dr. Justin Ries. After graduation, Travis worked at Northeastern University to construct century-scale records of coral growth rates and skeletal geochemistry from Belize with Dr. Justin Ries and Dr. Karl Castillo. He then completed his PhD and postdoc in Oceanography in the lab of Dr. Andreas Andersson at Scripps Institution of Oceanography investigating the rates and drivers of coral reef calcification and developed user-friendly tools to assess net coral reef calcification from benthic imagery and seawater chemistry data.