A
marine ecologist by training, Johanna is interested in encouraging the
integration of rigorous science into environmental decision-making to help
to address environmental problems that plague coastal and marine
ecosystems around the globe. She strongly believes that effective
communication across societal and institutional boundaries is the key for
making the best scientific information accessible to the public and
policy-makers.
Johanna joined NCORE in January 2003 after a year in Congress as a Knauss
Legislative Fellow in the office of Representative Sam Farr. There she
worked on the creation and promotion of marine and environmental policy
and helped analyze the consequences of federal environmental policies for
the CentralCoast
region of California. She was also instrumental in creating a speaker
series that brought renowned scientists to Capitol Hill to discuss the
scientific foundations of marine-related environmental issues. She has
herself been an invited speaker for university seminars to give her views
on the role of scientists in environmental policy-making.
Johanna and her
husband Warren Nott, a research diver from Australia, conduct coral reef
research and field education programs with Operation Wallacea off
Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia. Her doctoral dissertation (Stanford
University, 2001) focused on the impacts of agricultural nutrient runoff
in mangrove estuaries in Queensland, Australia. She earned her B.S. in
biochemistry (with a concentration in chemistry) from the University of
Vermont where she contributed to the development of anti-cancer drugs that
are currently in clinical trials. Between college and graduate school,
she worked as an underwater photographer and divemaster on a humpback
whale project in the Bahamas and theTurks and Caicos, a fisheries observer
on the Bering Sea, and a teaching assistant for a subtidal ecology course
in the Monterey Bay.
