Mike Sieracki

Oceanographer Mike Sieracki is Director of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Horn Point Laboratory. He was previously the lead program director for the biological oceanography program at the National Science Foundation and a senior research scientist at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine, where he served as acting director, directed the J. J. MacIsaac Flow Cytometry Facility, and studied microbial plankton ecology, including the phytoplankton spring bloom and harmful algal blooms.

He invented automated microscope systems for analyzing microplankton populations in the oceans and innovated single cell genomics methods for characterizing individual marine microbes. He has participated in over 25 research cruises with over 180 days at sea, including serving on the coordinator team of the Tara Oceans Expedition to map the biodiversity of plankton in the world’s oceans. He has taught courses around the world and has over 60 published scientific papers.

Dr. Sieracki holds a Ph.D. in biological oceanography and an M.S. in Microbiology from the University of Rhode Island, and a B.A. in Biological Sciences from the University of Delaware.