Gary Lagerloef began his career in oceanography as an undergraduate and obtained his Bachelors Degree from Florida Institute of Technology (1971). In the years 1972-1975, he served in the U.S. Coast Guard where he taught marine science at the Coast Guard Academy while earning a Masters Degree in Oceanography at the University of Connecticut. He spent the next nine years working for NOAA, about half that time as a seagoing officer on research ships in the Pacific and half at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) in Seattle, WA where he met his wife, Marcia.

Dr. Lagerloef completed a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography at the University of Washington in 1984 and later worked in private sector marine science. From 1988-1990, he served as Physical Oceanography Program Manager at NASA in Washington DC in the ocean science remote sensing program. In 1995, he co-founded Earth and Space Research, a non-profit scientific research institute in Seattle where he has developed several research projects devoted to studies of the upper ocean dynamics and climate variability using satellites.

In December 2003, Dr. Lagerloef was appointed by NASA to lead the Aquarius/SAC-D satellite mission as Principal Investigator (launch date in 2009). He played a major role in gaining approval for this program, which will study the interactions between the ocean circulation, global water cycle and climate by measuring ocean salinity from space. The Aquarius mission is being developed in an international partnership with Argentina's space agency, Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales, and is the first NASA satellite mission dedicated to measuring ocean salinity.

For more information regarding the Aquarius/SAC-D satellite mission, visit NASA's website: aquarius.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Interviews & Press Releases for Aquarius/Sac-D: www.esr.org/aquarius.html

Special Interests: Studies of ocean physics and climatology, with emphasis on developing new applications of remote sensing.