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Larry Mayer
Center for Coastal & Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center
Jere A. Chase Ocean Engineering Lab
24 Colovos Road
Durham, New Hampshire 03824
LARRY MAYER Larry Mayer is a Professor and the Director of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire. He graduated magna cum laude with an Honors degree in Geology from the University of Rhode Island in 1973 and received a Ph.D. from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in Marine Geophysics in 1979. At Scripps, he worked with the Marine Physical Laboratory's Deep-Tow Geophysical package, applying this sophisticated acoustic sensor to problems of deep-sea mapping and the history of climate. After being selected as an astronaut candidate finalist for NASA's first class of mission specialists, Larry went on to a Post-Doc at the School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island where he worked on the early development of the Chirp Sonar and problems of deep-sea sediment transport and paleoceanography. In 1982, he became an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Oceanography at Dalhousie University and in 1991 moved to the University of New Brunswick to take up the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Ocean Mapping. In 2000, Larry became the founding director of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire and the co-director of the NOAA/UNH Joint Hydrographic Center.
Larry has participated in more than 95 cruises (over 75 months at sea!) over the last 45 years and has been chief or co-chief scientist of numerous expeditions, including two legs of the Ocean Drilling Program and thirteen expeditions in the ice-covered regions of the high Arctic. He has served on, or chaired, far too many international panels and committees and has the requisite large number of publications on a variety of topics in marine geology and geophysics. He is the recipient of the Keen Medal for Marine Geology, an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Stockholm, and was a member of the President’s Panel on Ocean Exploration, the National Science Foundation’s Advisory Committee for the Geosciences, and chaired a National Academy of Science Committee on national needs for coastal mapping and charting, as well as the National Academies study on the impact of the Deepwater Horizon Spill. He was the co-chair of the NOAA’s Ocean Exploration Advisory Working Group, and the Vice-Chair of the Consortium of Ocean Leadership’s Board of Trustees and chaired the NAS’s Oceans Studies Board for six years. He also chairs the MARUM Science Advisory Board and is a member of the State Dept.’s Extended Continental Shelf Task Force and the Navy’s SCICEX Advisory Committee. Larry was appointed by President Obama to the Arctic Research Commission and, in 2017, was elected to the Hydrographic Society of America Hall of Fame. In 2018, he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering and, in 2019, was elected as a foreign member in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 2020, Larry was the first recipient of the Walter Munk Medal from The Oceanography Society and named a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. In 2021, he was elected to the Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar Research and, in 2022, he received the Sam Masry Prize from the Canadian Hydrographic Association for outstanding contributions to the hydrographic profession and its related disciplines.
Larry's current research deals with increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of seafloor mapping and remote characterization of the seafloor (applications of autonomous vehicles), as well as advanced applications of 3-D visualization to ocean mapping problems and applications of mapping to Law of the Sea issues, particularly in the Arctic.
