Princeton, New Jersey
Bess Ward is the William J. Sinclair Professor of Geosciences and Chair of the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University. Her research focuses on the nitrogen cycle in the ocean, using stable isotope and molecular biological approaches to understand the rates, distributions and regulation of nitrogen transformations in seawater. Professor Ward received her undergraduate degree in zoology at Michigan State University, Lansing, and her Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Washington, Seattle. She then held postdoctoral and research scientist positions at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California and next joined the Department of Ocean Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz as an assistant professor, becoming department chair after six years, before moving to Princeton. She has been department chair at Princeton for ten years, in a department with research specialties spanning the entire range from theoretical seismology to her own work in marine microbiology.