POLARIS APPLIED SCIENCE - Key Persons
Ms. Craig provides over 20 years of experience in oceanography, environmental monitoring, ecological risk assessment, and natural resource management. For the past 10 years Ms. Craig has been involved with spill response, prevention, and contingency planning. She has assisted with the preparation of numerous integrated spill response plans for regulatory compliance, spill response tactics manuals, and designed and developed databases in support of regional, national, and international spill response planning and preparedness.
Job Titles:
- Principal / Marine Scientist
Mr. Graham is trained as a chemical oceanographer with expertise in coral reef damage assessment, oil and chemical spill assessment and habitat restoration. Mr. Graham has responded to over 70 large vessel incidents & groundings, train derailments, pipeline spill and other incidents in the past 18+ years, working with government and industry to find restoration-based solutions to environmental casualties in the marine and inland environments. He also is a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialist for Polaris, utilizing GIS software to generate maps to aid emergency response operations and natural resource damage assessment studies.
Job Titles:
- PRINCIPAL
- Scientist
- P.M., TAYLOR
Dr. Taylor is scientist with over 30 years of experience in environmental and marinesciences. His projects in oilspill response include planning, regulatory compliance, spillexercises, response evaluation, technical support in environmental and shoreline assessment, baseline studies, sediment quality and transport, coastal processes and marine geology.
Owens, EH., TAYLOR, E., Sergy, G., An, C., Chen, Z., Lee, K., 2021. A Review of Response Options to Accelerate the Recovery of Oiled Shorelines. Jour. Environ. Informatics Letters, v. 5(1), p. 1-16. http://www.jeiletters.org/index.php?journal=mys&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=202100049
Taylor, P.M., TAYLOR, E., Bjerkemo, O.K., and Chazot, C., 2021. Guidelines on the Implementation of the OPRC Convention and OPRC-HNS Protocol. In, Proc. International Oil Spill Conference
Challenger, G., Gmur, S., and TAYLOR, E., 2021. A review of Gulf of Mexico coastal marsh erosion studies following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill and comparison to over 4 years of shoreline loss data from Fall 2010 to Summer 2015.
Dr. Taylor is a scientist with over 30 years of experience in environmental and marine sciences. His projects in oil spill response include planning, regulatory compliance, spill exercises, response evaluation, technical support in environmental and shoreline assessment, baseline studies, sediment quality and transport, coastal processes and marine geology. Dr. Taylor has taught undergraduate and graduate level courses in geology and oceanography. As an International Maritime Organization (IMO) expert consultant, he has been on teams conducting IMO model courses in oil spill response (OPRC) and has worked on regional and national planning initiatives. Dr. Taylor's field experience encompasses river, lake, harbor, coastal and deep-sea programs and spill response technical support worldwide. His extensive field and laboratory research includes studies of onshore to offshore marine geology and oceanography. He his provided leadership and management to numerous multi-disciplinary programs that required coordinating project teams for both industry and international scientific programs.
Job Titles:
- President
- Principal Marine Scientist / President
Mr. Challenger is a marine ecologist with expertise in environmental resource management, coral reef damage assessment, oil and chemical spill assessment and habitat restoration. Mr. Challenger has been involved in assessing NEARLY 200 large oil spill, pipeline, railroad and ship grounding incidents in the past 30 years, working with government and industry to study impacts and find restoration-based solutions to environmental casualties. His career spans from post-graduate studies in the Prince William Sound in 1990 with the US National Marine Fisheries Service following the Exxon Valdez to being the lead investigator for the Shoreline Natural Resource Damage Assessment for BP during the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico from 2010-2015.
Mr. Challenger helped form Polaris Applied Sciences in 1998 and is currently the President. Prior to forming Polaris, Mr. Challenger taught marine resource management and coral reef ecology at the Center for Marine Resource Conservation in the Turks and Caicos, BWI, the Newfound Harbor Marine Institute in the Florida Keys, and aboard the SSV Westward in the Eastern Caribbean for the Semester at Sea program accredited by Boston University
Job Titles:
- Ecologist
- Enviornmental Scientist
- Environmental Scientist
Ms. Iliff is an ecologist with experience in coastal habitat restoration, ecosystem ecology, marine pollution science, and statistics. She has 8+ years of research experience focused on understanding the impacts of pollutants on marine ecosystems and advancing the science that underpins NRDA restoration scaling in coastal environments. Her research includes studies of how ecosystem services are both lost through human interactions and gained through restoration. Her work has spanned various regions and habitat types including seagrass beds, coral reefs, mangrove forests, oyster reefs, salt marshes, sandy beaches, rocky intertidal, and riverine ecosystems.
Ms. Iliff has responded to and assessed damages from oil spills of national significance, has conducted shoreline surveys and lead SCAT teams, and has performed scientific dives for coral reef damage assessment and restoration.
Prior to joining Polaris, Ms. Iliff was a research assistant and taught undergraduate level general ecology at the University of Michigan, was an environmental technician and research affiliate at the Loxahatchee River Environmental Control District, and was a Hollings Scholar with NOAA's Restoration Center and Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center.
Education
M.S., 2022, University of Michigan, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
B.S., 2019, Florida Atlantic University, Marine Biology
An experienced field scientist and accomplished SCUBA diver, Mr. Scott performs scientific dives for coral reef damage assessment, coral reef restoration and salvage support and shoreline surveys for oil and chemical spill assessment and habitat restoration. Mr. Scott has responded to over 20 vessel and pipeline incidents over 10+ years and has throughout his career worked closely with government, industry, academia and non-profit sectors with are cent emphasis on restoration-based solutions to marine injury cases.