Rate My Professor Richard Coffin

Richard Coffin is Professor and Chair of the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, where he has served since 2014, leading research and education in coastal and deep ocean topics. He holds a B.A. in Microbiology from the University of New Hampshire (1977), an M.S. in Microbiology from the University of New Hampshire (1980), a Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Delaware (1986), and completed an NSF-funded postdoctoral fellowship at Gordon College (1986-1987). Earlier in his career, Coffin was Section Head of Marine Biogeochemistry at the Naval Research Laboratory (2003-2014), Senior Research Microbiologist at the Naval Research Laboratory (1996-2003), and Research Microbial Ecologist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Gulf Breeze, Florida (1990-1996). He has also served as adjunct faculty at the University of Hawaii, University of Delaware, Florida State University, and Texas A&M University.

Coffin's research focuses on carbon isotope geochemistry to investigate biogeochemical cycles in coastal oceans, estuaries, soils, groundwater systems, and deep ocean sediments. His global fieldwork includes U.S. Navy harbors, Arctic and Antarctic Oceans, and coastal regions off Chile, New Zealand, Canada, Norway, Japan, and the U.S., contributing to methane hydrate exploration, environmental assessments, and technology development with cost savings such as $25 million for harbor remediation in Liepaja, Latvia, and $10-30 million per site for gas hydrate explorations. With over 8,300 citations on Google Scholar, key publications include 'Complex gas hydrate from the Cascadia margin' (Nature, 2007), 'Isotopic and elemental variations of carbon and nitrogen in a mangrove estuary' (Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 1996), 'Carbon-sulfur signals of methane versus crude oil diagenetic decomposition' (Chemical Geology, 2021), and 'Carbon Isotope Forensics for Methane Source Identification' (Remediation, 2020). Coffin serves on the editorial boards of Energies (since 2015) and Ecologies (since 2020), has guest-edited special issues on natural gas hydrates, and has delivered lectures on gas hydrates, carbon sequestration, and geochemical assessments at conferences and universities worldwide, including EGU 2020, AAPG workshops, and the University of Tromsø.