Robert J. Mayer Ph.D.
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Mayer spent his childhood in contact with the ocean on the coast of the island. He went to school in the same area and graduated from the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras with a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology in 1993. He later moved to Wisconsin where he worked in the plankton ecology laboratory of Dr. Stanley I. Dodson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He graduated with a Master’s of Science in Zoology in 1999 and then moved to North Carolina to pursue a Ph.D. in the ecological physiology of marine animals with Dr. Richard B. Forward at the Duke University Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, North Carolina. While there, his research focused on different aspects of the physiology (e.g. non-visual communication) and behavior of the brine shrimp populations of Puerto Rico.
In 2004, he graduated and immediately accepted a teaching position at the University of Puerto Rico at Aguadilla which is located on the northwestern tip of the island. He is currently a tenured professor in that institution and teaches courses in general biology for honor students, general zoology and undergraduate research. He also founded and has been directing Vida Marina (Center for Conservation and Ecological Restoration at the UPR at Aguadilla) since 2007. The center has strong volunteer participation and operates several conservation projects and an environmental education component in collaboration with the UW-Madison Latino Earth Partnership Program. The projects focus on the ecological restoration of coastal dunes, along the north coast of Puerto Rico, and the Finca Nolla Nature Reserve. The staff is also involved in a joint effort to restore the habitat of the Mona island Iguana. The Center was awarded an EPA Environmental Quality Award in 2008 for their monofilament and derelict fishing gear removal efforts.
He was recently part of the DOI-FEMA Natural and Cultural Resources Recovery Support Function (NCR RSF) and did an assessment of the damage caused by recent storms on the coastal dunes of the north coast of Puerto Rico. The center he directs was recently awarded a coastal resilience grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for the ecological restoration of coastal dunes along the north coast of Puerto Rico.