Jeffrey Chanton
Jeff Chanton honored as Lawton Distinguished Professor | English | Digital Narratives
Jeffrey Chanton, an acclaimed climate scientist who has also done extensive work investigating the effects of the BP oil spill, has been named the 2017-2018 Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor, the highest honor given by the Florida State University faculty to one of its own.
“Jeff is a tremendous researcher and an asset to the Florida State University faculty,” said FSU President John Thrasher. “In addition to an impressive research record, Jeff is an outstanding colleague to his fellow faculty members and mentor to his students. The faculty has made an excellent choice in naming Jeff this year’s Lawton Distinguished Professor.”
Chanton is the John Widmer Winchester Professor of Oceanography in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, which is part of the College of Arts and Sciences. He is a 29-year veteran of the university and a fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
“I just feel really great about this,” Chanton said. “It’s an amazing group of distinguished faculty who I’m joining that have received this honor. I owe a lot of the kudos to the people who I work with. They are really supportive, work independently, and I can count on them. And that’s a really important thing.”
Chanton’s research has focused largely on climate change, examining the causes of increased methane gas in the atmosphere and changes in our environment that continue that trend. He has also done extensive work on the effects of the 2010 BP oil spill, including research on how methane-derived carbon from the spill entered the food web and how much of the oil sank to the ocean floor and mixed with the sediment.
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