Ajit Subramaniam

Ajit Subramaniam is a Lamont Research Professor at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and is an oceanographer with expertise in biogeochemical cycles, remote sensing, bio-optics, and phytoplankton physiology. He is interested in advancing our ability to observe the ocean and expand our understanding how the marine ecosystem works and can be managed. He has served as the Program Director for the Marine Microbiology Initiative at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and a Program Director in the Biological Oceanography Program at the U.S. National Science Foundation. He has worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Coastal Services Center in Charleston, SC, the University of Maryland in College Park, and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Ajit earned his Ph.D. in Coastal Oceanography and M.S. in Marine Environmental Science from SUNY, Stony Brook. He has a Bachelor's degree in Physics from The American College in India.

He has worked with remote sensing data for more than 30 years and has developed algorithms for detection of cyanobacterial blooms. Subramaniam has taught at the Austral Summer Institute, Universidad de Concepción in 2004, 07, and 10 and was awarded a Fulbright Specialist Award in 2010 for this. He was awarded a Mercator Fellowship by the University of Rostock and the Baltic Sea Research Institute, Germany in 2017 and the LDEO Climate and Life Fellowship in 2021. He is a Sustaining Fellow of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.