The Frontier State Conversations is a series where we host trailblazers across public policy, venture capital, and disruptive technologies. We aim to unpack competing ideas of fostering innovation, as seen across the private, public, non-profit, and academic spheres.
In this edition of The Frontier State series, we - in tandem with The Business & Government Professional Interest Council at Harvard Kennedy School - hosted Peter de Menocal , President of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI), to discuss The Frontier State of Blue Tech.
Blue Tech is a term that refers to the advanced technology sector of the maritime industry, which promotes sustainable ocean activities. It includes a wide range of industries and technologies that are used to monitor and preserve the health of marine ecosystems.
We aimed to highlight WHOI’s and the State of Massachusetts’ focus on Blue Tech and its increasing spotlight, the region’s developing nature as a ClimateTech ecosystem, and the role venture capital and other forms of private and public capital will play in the next two decades of decarbonization.
Speaker’s brief biography:
Peter de Menocal
Peter B. de Menocal is the eleventh president and director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. A marine geologist and paleoclimatologist, de Menocal’s research uses deep-sea ocean sediments as archives of how and why Earth’s ocean and climate have changed in the past in order to predict how they may change in the future.
Prior to assuming leadership of WHOI, de Menocal was the Thomas Alva Edison/Con Edison Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. He served as Columbia’s Dean of Science for the Faculty of Arts & Sciences and founded Columbia’s Center for Climate & Life, a climate solutions research accelerator.
Some awards and distinctions: Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, AGU Emiliani lecturer, Columbia Lenfest Distinguished Faculty award, and Distinguished Brooksian award.
Peter completed a PhD in Geology from Columbia University, a MSc in Oceanography from the University of Rhode Island, and a BS in Geology from St. Lawrence University.
