The Science Panel's expertise and advice are critical to the Puget Sound Partnership’s efforts to develop a comprehensive, science-based plan to restore Puget Sound. The members, appointed by the Leadership Council, were chosen from the top scientists in Washington State.

Chair: John Stein
Term: 4 years 11/10/2019
John Stein is the current Science and Research Director of NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, WA. The Center studies living marine resources (e.g., salmon, groundfish, and killer whales) and their habitats to better understand these resources and their ecosystems to assist resource managers in making sound decisions that build sustainable fisheries, recover endangered and threatened species, and sustain healthy ecosystems, and reduce human health risks. Currently, Dr. Stein oversees science to support ecosystem-based management of the California Current through NOAA’s Integrated Ecosystem Assessment program, as well as the Center’s efforts on impacts of ocean acidification on biological systems in Puget Sound. In addition, Stein serves on the Executive Committee for the West Coast Governors Alliance on Ocean Health and is the US Delegate to the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES).

Vice-chair: Ken Currens
Term: 4 years 11/10/2019
Ken Currens is a scientist for the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, where he serves as a scientific liaison between the Western Washington Treaty Tribes and the federal government, state agencies, and non-governmental organizations on salmon recovery and ecosystem conservation issues. He guides a program that provides ecological and genetic analyses for salmon recovery, ecosystem monitoring, and hatchery reform. From 2010-2012, he served as Science Director for the Puget Sound Partnership. He was Chair of Washington’s Independent Science Panel (2000-2006), which was created by the Legislature to provide scientific guidance and review on salmon recovery and watershed health issues before the formation of the Washington Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the Puget Sound Technical Recovery Team (now known as the Regional Implementation Technical Team) since 2000 and provided technical analyses to develop recovery plans for three species of ESA-listed salmon. His research focuses on ecological genetics and population structure of Pacific Northwest fishes and on the use of analytical tools for assessing genetic risks and ecological decision making. He has served on editorial boards for the North American Journal of Fisheries Management and Fisheries. Dr. Currens received a B.A. in English from the University of Oregon and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Oregon State University.

Barbara Bentley
Term: 4 years 11/10/2018
Barbara Bentley is a retired university professor who has done ecological research on the effects of global change on coastal ecosystems. In addition to academic work, she has served on local governing boards, including the Environmental Advisory Board for the town of Head of the Harbor in New York, the Community Council for the township of Emigration Canyon, Utah, and currently on the Marine Resources Committee for San Juan County. She continues to be actively involved in teaching, with an emphasis on research in environmental education both locally and in Costa Rica. Barbara lives on Orcas and is deeply committed to maintaining the health and beauty of our unique shores, lands, and communities.

Nives Dolšak
Term: 4 years 11/10/17
Nives Dolšak is Associate Professor at the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs (University of Washington Seattle campus) and School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences (Bothell campus). She is also a Visiting Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Her research examines institutional challenges in governing common pool resources at multiple levels of aggregation. She has co-edited two volumes:  “The Drama of the Commons” (National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council’s Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Change); and  “The Commons in the New Millennium: Challenges and Adaptation”, co-edited with Professor Elinor Ostrom (the MIT Press)

Her other published work examines national level global climate change mitigation; media coverage and its impact on climate change legislative agenda in the U.S. states; the impact of civil society in environmental policy in transitional economies; the link between donors' commercial interests and the location of environmental aid projects; the impact of voting in international environmental regimes on bilateral aid allocations; applicability and political feasibility of tradable permits in common-pool resource management.

Nives holds a BA in Economics from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a Joint Ph.D. from the School of Public & Environmental Affairs and Department of Political Science Indiana University, Bloomington.

Tim Essington
Term: 4 years 11/10/2017
Tim Essington is a professor and Associate Director at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, and the Director of the Quantitative Ecology and Resource Management Interdisciplinary Research Program. His research is directed at better understanding human effects on marine food webs and ecosystems and evaluating effectiveness of alternative regulatory and policy actions.

He works in diverse ecosystems, ranging from estuaries to coastal and open oceans, and uses a wide range of quantitative tools to evaluate how ecological systems respond to fishing and other disturbances.

Robert Ewing
Term: 4 years 11/10/2018
Bob Ewing spent 20 years as the Director of Timberlands Strategic Planning for Weyerhaeuser. Before his recent retirement, Bob was responsible for the development, implementation and tracking of strategic management plans for all of Weyerhaeuser’s forestland, including forests in Washington, Oregon, seven southeastern states, Canada, and additional international locations. This work included evaluation of forest conditions, modeling forest productivity and health, developing vegetation management and harvest plans, and monitoring the effects of forest practices on forest ecosystem values. Prior to joining Weyerhaeuser, Bob worked for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection as head of their resource assessment and strategic planning programs. Bob has a PhD in Wildland Resource Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

William Labiosa
Term: 4 years 11/10/2017
Labiosa has worked as a Research Physical Scientist with USGS since 2001, specializing in watershed/ecosystems management decision analysis and decision support. He has extensive ecological experience and knowledge of Puget Sound serving as the project manager and PI for the Puget Sound Ecosystem Portfolio Model project – a model-based evaluation of ecosystem services and metrics of human well-being as influenced by land use change and regional-scale coastal anthropogenic modifications. Prior to working for USGS, he worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Water in Washington, D.C.

Wayne Landis
Term: 4 years 11/10/18
Since 1989, Wayne Landis has been the Director of the Institute of Environmental Toxicology, part of the Huxley College of the Environment at Western Washington University. He has extensive experience in environmental toxicology, population modeling and regional scale environmental risk assessment. Recent projects include calculating the risk due to whirling disease to trout in the American Southwest, the calculation of risk due to invasive species in Puget Sound and the Chesapeake Bay, the application of risk assessment to forestry management and the development of a risk based decision framework for the mercury contaminated South River, Virginia.

Jan Newton
Term: 4 years 11/10/19
As principal oceanographer at UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory, Newton provides oversight of an observational and modeling study of hypoxia in Hood Canal. Newton also is an assistant professor at UW’s School of Oceanography, where she works with faculty and students to develop and conduct research on biological oceanography of Pacific Northwest coastal and inland waters.

Ian Perry
Term: 4 years 11/10/2017
Ian Perry is a research scientist with Fisheries & Oceans Canada, at the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, BC, Canada. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., and has taught courses on fisheries oceanography at universities in Canada, Chile, and Portugal. Dr. Perry currently heads the Ecosystem Approaches Program at the Pacific Biological Station, and was one of two co-leads for the DFO Strait of Georgia Ecosystem Research Initiative. His research expertise includes the effects of the environment on finfish and invertebrates; the structure and function of marine ecosystems; ecosystem-based approaches to the management of marine resources; the human dimensions of marine ecosystem changes; and scientific leadership of international and inter-governmental programs on marine ecosystems and global change. In addition, he is a former Chair of the international Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics (GLOBEC) program, whose goal was to understand how global changes affect the abundance, diversity and productivity of marine populations, and is a former Chief Scientist and Chair of the Science Board for the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES). He is a past Editor for the scientific journal Fisheries Oceanography, is presently a Subject Editor for the journal Ecology and Society, and is a member of the Editorial Boards for Fisheries Oceanography, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, and Journal of Marine Systems. In 2008, Dr. Perry received the Fisheries and Oceans Canada Assistant Deputy Minister’s Distinction Award, as well as the Fisheries and Oceans Canada Prix d’Excellence.

Timothy Quinn
Term: 4 years 11/10/18
Chief scientist of the WDFW’s habitat program since 1999, Quinn also is a member of
The Evergreen State College’s adjunct faculty, where he teaches in the Master’s in Environmental Studies program. Quinn recently served on the Science Working Group that came up with scientific underpinnings and a technical framework for the development of the Puget Sound Partnership.

John Stark
Term: 4 years 11/10/18
John Stark is the Director of the Washington State University, Puyallup Research and Extension Center. John is also the Director of the Washington Stormwater Center and a member of the Puget Sound Partnership Science Panel. Additionally, John is a Professor and runs the Ecotoxicology Program at WSU. John's research deals with protection of endangered species and ecological risk assessment of pollutants with particular emphasis on the effects of pollutants on salmon and their food. Recent projects involve determination of the effects of polluted stormwater runoff on salmon and invertebrate health. John has published over 120 peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals, numerous book chapters, and a book on ecological risk assessment entitled "Demographic Toxicity: Methods in Ecological Risk Assessment".

Terre Satterfield
Term: 4 years 11/10/2017
Terre Satterfield is an interdisciplinary social scientist; professor of culture, risk and the environment; and director of the University of British Columbia’s Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability.
Her research concerns sustainable thinking and action in the context of environmental assessment and decision making. She studies natural resource controversies; culture and cultural ecosystem services; and the perceived risk of new technologies. She has worked primarily on tensions between indigenous communities and the state and/or regulatory dilemmas regarding new technologies.

Her work has been published in journals such as: Nature; Global Environmental Change; Ecological Applications, Ecology and Society; Journal of Environmental Management; Biosciences; Society and Natural Resources; Land Economics; Science and Public Policy; Ecological Economics; Environmental Values; and Risk Analysis. Her books include: The Anatomy of a Conflict: Emotion, Knowledge and Identity in Old Growth Forests; What’s Nature Worth? (with Scott Slovic); and The Earthscan Reader in Environmental Values (with Linda Kalof).

Eric Strecker
Term: 4 years 11/10/2018
Eric Strecker, P.E., B.C.E.E., is a Principal Water Resources Engineer and Fisheries Biologist with Geosyntec Consultants in Portland, Oregon. He focuses on the design, monitoring, and evaluation of sustainable stormwater best management practices (BMPs), the development of major project and watershed master plans and the overall assessment and management planning to protect aquatic resources. He has provided technical direction and assistance to public and private sector clients in stormwater master planning, National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting, Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs), surface water pollution assessment and control, and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and Resource Conservation and Recovery ACT (RCRA) surface water compliance orders for almost 30 years.

He continues to advance the state of the practice by conducting as a Principal or Co-Principal Investigator applied national and local research studies on sustainable stormwater management for the U.S. EPA, U.S. Federal Highway Administration, Water Environment Research Foundation, and National Cooperative Highway Research Program, as well as state and local research efforts. Mr. Strecker was recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers for his work on BMP technology applications with the 2003 Civil Engineering State-of-the-Art Award. In addition to his work on guidance documents for urban stormwater management, Mr. Strecker has written more the 50 publications on stormwater planning, low impact development approaches, and the effectiveness of BMP technologies. He likes to fish; a lot.

Katharine Wellman
Term: 4 years 11/10/18
Wellman has 20 years of experience as a social scientist in the marine estuarine environment. Currently a marine environmental economist with Northern Economics, Inc., Wellman has also held positions at NOAA and Battelle Memorial Institute.

Joel Baker, Representing the Puget Sound Institute
Term: non-voting Ex Officio member
For more than 20 years, Baker has led water and air quality assessments in a variety of complex ecosystems, including the Great Lakes, the Hudson River and Chesapeake Bay. Baker holds the Port of Tacoma Chair in Environmental Science at UW Tacoma, is the Science Director of the Center for Urban Waters, and is the Executive Director of the Puget Sound Institute.