Nicholas Ward

Educational background:

May 2010: University of Washington School of Oceanography, M.S. Chemical Oceanography

June 2008: University of California San Diego: Environmental Systems(Earth Science) major, Biological
Sciences minor.

Research Interests

River carbon cycling and the fate of terrestrial organic carbon

Biography

Nick spent his early years in Monterey, California and graduated from UC San Diego in 2008 with a BS
in Environmental Systems/Earth Science and a minor in Biological Sciences. He is now pursuing a PhD in
Chemical Oceanography at the University of Washington, and is interested in unraveling the role of river
systems in the global carbon cycle. Prior to joining the River Systems Research Group, he performed
research at both the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution (WHOI). At SIO he spent several years working with Dr. Lihini Aluwihare, studying the
relationship between the expression of specific genes involved in nitrogen metabolism in phytoplankton
to in situ nitrogen conditions. He spent the summer of 2007 researching the degradation of dissolved
organic matter in arctic rivers with Professors Daniel Repeta, Benjamin Van Mooy, Max Holmes, and
Tim Eglinton at WHOI. To earn his Masters degree he studied the mobilization sequence of nitrogen and
carbon species on short time scales to determine the potential effects of watershed nutrient loading
on low dissolved O2 concentrations in Hood Canal, a branch of Puget Sound, Washington, USA. Nick is
currently a senior doctoral student focusing on the carbon cycling dynamics of the lower Amazon River.

Current projects

ROCA: River-Ocean Continuum of the Amazon

NSF GK-12 Education program