Professor of Marine Sciences, University of Georgia, Athens Dr. Joye studies the cycling of nutrients, organic materials, and dissolved gases in the environment. Her research has been widely published in leading scientific journals, and she is regularly called on by national and international scientific and policy agencies for expert commentary including the impacts of climate change on biological and chemical processes in marine ecosystems. She has shown for the first time that even small changes in temperature affect the efficiency of super-sensitive microbes that degrade organic matter in coastal ocean sediments. Her work related to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill zone has documented the distribution and chemical composition of deepwater plumes of hydrocarbons, measuring the activities of microbes breaking down the hydrocarbons, and assessing other variables such as dissolved oxygen concentration and nutrient concentrations in spill impacted waters. She earned her Ph.D. degree in marine sciences from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.