Maya Tolstoy, Ph.D.Nobel Conference 48

Associate professor, marine geology and geophysics, and research scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, N.Y.

Maya Tolstoy is a marine geophysicist and seismologist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. She researches mid-ocean ridge earthquakes, the links between earthquakes and life at hydrothermal vent systems, seafloor instrumentation, and the impact of anthropogenic noise on marine mammals. At Lamont-Doherty she is responsible for the design, execution, and analysis of marine seismic experiments. She has been part of 27 research cruises in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans and the Mediterranean Sea.

Maya graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1988 and earned a Ph.D. in earth sciences and marine geophysics in 1994 from the University of California’s Scripps Institute of Oceanography. She was featured in the 2005 James Cameron film Aliens of the Deep, in which she and a team of NASA scientists explore the Mid-Ocean Range, a submerged chain of mountains that band the Earth and are home to some of the planet’s most peculiar life forms. In 2009 she received WINGS WorldQuest’s Women of Discovery Sea Award for her achievements.