Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

Martin Thiel is a marine biologist with interests in invertebrate biology and the ecology of marine communities. Martin has joined the MarineGEO Program as Managing Director in September 2023 after having served as a Professor of Marine Biology at Universidad Catolica del Norte in Coquimbo, Chile, for 25 years. He has studied diverse coastal ecosystems over more than 3000 miles between the dry Atacama desert and the wet Patagonian fjords. Martin also has been the founding director of the citizen science program “Cientificos de la Basura” (= Litter Scientists), which is a research collaboration between scientists, teachers and schoolchildren from 11 Latin-American countries, whose objective is to understand the problem of marine litter and also actively contribute to the solutions (see www.cientificosdelabasura.cl). At MarineGEO he is helping to consolidate and expand the network especially to Central and South America but also to other regions of the world.