Dr. Rick A. Reynolds is a Project Scientist in the Marine Physical Laboratory at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.

Reynolds obtained a B.S. (magna cum laude) in Biological Sciences from Bowling Green State University, where he received the award for most outstanding senior student in Biology, the President’s award for outstanding senior class leader, and was selected as the Mid-American Conference scholar-athlete of the year. He spent one summer attending the Naturalist-Ecologist Training Program held at the University of Michigan Biological Station at Douglas Lake. Reynolds received his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California under the direction of Professor Dale A. Kiefer. Following post-doctoral research at Scripps and the UW, he worked for four years as a Senior Oceanographer at the Washington State Department of Ecology addressing issues of water quality and environmental impacts in Washington coastal waters and Puget Sound. Reynolds returned to Scripps as a Project Scientist in 2005.

Reynolds’ current research interests include the radiative transfer of light within the ocean, the optical properties of seawater, and the development of optical tools for studying marine biogeochemistry. He has participated in numerous research expeditions throughout the world’s oceans, with a particular emphasis on polar regions. He is a recipient of both the Antarctic Service award and the Coast Guard Arctic Service medal.

Reynolds is a member of the American Geophysical Union, the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography, and the Oceanography Society. He has served on various professional panels, such as IOCCG Working Groups and NASA Science Teams.

Reynolds also served as a scientific advisor for MANTA Instruments Inc., a company co-founded with Scripps colleagues in 2014 to commercialize new instrumentation for accurately counting and sizing submicron particles in aquatic suspensions. This instrumentation is now commercially available from Horiba Scientific (ViewSizer 3000). This effort stemmed directly from work conducted through an NSF MRI award.