Bernard AVRIL

Dr. Bernard Avril’s academic background is in marine biogeochemistry, bio-optics and ecology, and his professional expertise ranges from experimental natural sciences to defining transitions towards sustainability and from research management and evaluation to strategic foresight and capacity development. He is an experienced research project and program manager / strategy advisor / independent consultant, for integrated water, marine & sustainability research, education & outreach. He has developed a strong knowledge and practice in international, integrated and complex science management in water, marine and sustainability research fields, a result-driven approach, more than 20 years of international work experience, and international mobility. He has recently worked with the Integrated Marine Biogeochemistry and Ecosystem Research (IMBER,Array) project in the IMBER International Project Office (IPO) hosted by the Institute of Marine Research (IMR) in Bergen, Norway as IMBER Executive Officer / IMR senior researcher from 2012 to 2015. IMBER is an international, interdisciplinary project that aims to investigate the sensitivity of marine biogeochemical cycles and ecosystems to global change, on time scales ranging from years to decades. IMBER aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of, and accurate predictive capacity for ocean responses to accelerating global change and the consequent effects on the Earth System and human society. IMBER has been sponsored by the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR), the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the Future Earth programme. Before working with IMBER and IMR, he was Science Officer for environmental sciences, geosciences and sustainability research at the European Science Foundation (ESF) in Strasbourg, France, where, among other activities, he coordinated the foresight initiative on the Responses to Environmental and Societal Challenges for our Unstable Earth (RESCUE,Array) and the preparation and edition of an ESF Science Policy Briefing on the “Impacts of Ocean Acidification” (see,Array) and of a UNESCO-IHE ‘Value of Water’ Research Report on “Accounting for water scarcity and pollution in the rules of international trade” (waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Report54-Proceedings-ESF-Workshop-Water-Trade.pdf). Prior to that, he was the Deputy Executive Director for the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS, web archive at http://ijgofs.whoi.edu ) at the JGOFS International Project Office, hosted at the University of Bergen, Norway. He was also the Assistant Executive Officer for the EU-funded Ocean Margin Exchange (OMEX, web archive atArray) project, phase II, based at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, and a post-doctoral researcher and bio-optics/biogeochemistry lab. manager in the College of Marine Sciences, University of South Florida, USA. His PhD dissertation (1995, UPMC / Paris 6, France) focused on the dissolved organic carbon in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean and the Western Mediterranean.