Rate My Professor Jay Cullen

Jay Cullen is the Director and Professor of Chemical Oceanography in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria. He earned a BSc from McGill University and a PhD from Rutgers University. Cullen joined the University of Victoria in 2003 and established a world-class marine geochemistry laboratory with nearly one million dollars in funding from NSERC, CFI, and other agencies. He leads the Cullen Lab, which investigates trace element and isotope biogeochemistry in natural waters, focusing on the chemical speciation and fate of trace elements, their bioavailability to marine microbes, and the effects of anthropogenic perturbations such as climate change, ocean acidification, sea ice melt, continental margin processes, and ocean deoxygenation on trace metal cycles. His research interests include chemical oceanography, marine biogeochemistry of trace metals, bio-inorganic chemistry, palaeoceanography and global change, stable isotope geochemistry, and development of novel techniques for trace metals. An international leader in the field, Cullen participates in research cruises across all oceans and collaborates with scientists worldwide.

Cullen was named a 2017 recipient of the Provost’s Engaged Scholar Award, receiving $10,000 to support his research, teaching, and community engagement efforts. He instigated and leads the InFORM network, which monitors oceanic contamination from the Fukushima Dai-ichi incident, partnering with Canadian and American scientists, government organizations, NGOs, and more than 600 volunteer citizen scientists through town hall meetings with First Nations communities, blogs for lay audiences, and public presentations. A prolific author, he has published approximately 45 peer-reviewed papers in top journals as of 2017, including 'The GEOTRACES Intermediate Data Product 2017' in Chemical Geology (2018), 'Undocumented water column sink for cadmium in open ocean surface waters' (2014), and 'On the nonlinear relationship between dissolved cadmium and phosphate in the modern ocean' in Limnology and Oceanography (2006). His scholarship has earned over 4,400 citations on ResearchGate and includes more than 100 conference presentations. In 2017, he was shortlisted among 72 candidates from 3,700 applicants by the Canadian Space Agency for astronaut selection.