Dr. Jenni Brandon, Scripps Oceanographer, will speak about plastics and micro plastics and their impact on human and marine health.

Jennifer Brandon earned her PhD in Biological Oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in December 2017, focusing on the nascent field of marine microplastics. She is an expert in quantifying and identifying marine microplastics, and has developed multiple novel methods to identify the spatial and temporal ranges of microplastics and determine the age of plastics exposed to varying weathering conditions in the environment. She was the first to find microplastics in the temporal sediment record. The exponential increase of microplastics she recorded from 1945-2009 closely correlates with the exponential increase in worldwide plastics production over that same time period.

Dr. Brandon is passionate about the world of science communication, having given hundreds of interviews and talks to all types of stakeholders, and was a college lecturer on communicating science to the public during her post-doc at Birch Aquarium.