Shallin Busch, Ph.D.

Background

Shallin Busch joined NOAA in 2007 and is currently the director of the Conservation Biology Division. From 2013-2020, she worked for NOAA's Ocean Acidification Program, where her duties included staffing the Interagency Working Group on Ocean Acidification, managing the Ocean Acidification Information Exchange, and building ocean acidification science and policy at state, national, and international levels. Since 2007, Shallin has conducted research at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center on ocean acidification, climate change, and salmon population dynamics. She received an undergraduate degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University and a doctorate in Zoology from the University of Washington.

Current Research

Shallin is interested in how environmental change influences animal physiology, populations, and communities. Her current research focuses on how ocean acidification and climate change may impact North Pacific ecosystems. She leads laboratory experiments focused on Pacific krill sensitivity to ocean change and collaborates with colleagues on similar experiments on Dungeness crab and Pacific oysters. Shallin has worked with colleagues to build a synthetic understanding of species sensitivity to ocean acidification and to explore how the impacts of ocean acidification and climate change may cascade through ecosystems using models. By integrating results from organismal to ecosystem levels, Shallin aims to generate data relevant to management of species and communities in a changing environment.