Deborah Steinberg


Deborah K. Steinberg is an American Antarctic biological oceanographer who works on interdisciplinary oceanographic research programs. Steinberg's research focuses on the role that zooplankton play in marine food webs and the global carbon cycle, and how these small drifting animals are affected by changes in climate.

Early life and education

Steinberg received her B.A. at the University of California Santa Barbara in 1987. During her undergraduate studies she was a member of a science team for winter research expedition in Antarctica. She received a PhD at the University of California Santa Cruz in 1993 focusing on zooplankton and marine dynamics. After graduation she joined the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences as a Research Scientist where she remained until 2001. She then joined the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences, where she is a CSX Professor of Marine Science.

Career and impact

Steinberg has been an international leader in understanding the zooplankton and jellyfish ecology along with how the food web structures the flux of carbon to the deep sea. she has worked at Palmer Station within the US National Science Foundation Long-Term Ecological Research program focusing on understanding how rapid warming drives ecosystem change.
Her research program focuses on how zooplankton influence cycling of nutrients and organic matter, and how climate affects long-term change in zooplankton communities. Steinberg's laboratory has been involved in a number of projects with this theme, including the role of zooplankton vertical migration in transport of nutrients, the ecology of gelatinous zooplankton "blooms" and their effect on fluxes of organic matter, the importance of zooplankton in the cycling of dissolved organic matter, mesopelagic zooplankton and particle flux, and the effects of mesoscale eddies and a large river plume on zooplankton community structure. They are also using long-term data sets from the Western Antarctic Peninsula and the Sargasso Sea off Bermuda to study the effects of climate change on zooplankton communities, and how these community changes may affect ocean food webs and biogeochemistry.
Steinberg has worked in a number of marine environments including coastal California, Antarctic, Sargasso Sea, the subtropical and subarctic North Pacific, the Amazon River plume, and the Chesapeake Bay. In the Antarctic, she oversees the krill research of Kim Bernard and her team known as "The Psycho Krillers".
Steinberg has spent collectively more than 1.5 years at sea on more than 50 research cruises, and starred in the documentary "Antarctic Edge: 70° South.

Projects

Awards and honors

Professional memberships

Selected works