Dr. Ray Beiersdorfer (pronounced buy-ers-door-fur) spent 13 years in college earning bachelors, masters and PhD degrees, all in Geology. His PhD is from the University of California Davis. He is a Distinguished Professor of Geology at in the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences at Youngstown State University in Ohio, where he has been on the faculty since 1993. In the early 1980’s he worked as an Exploration Geologist for Gulf Oil in California. He did pre-doctoral research as the Esso Research Scholar at Monash University in Melbourne Australia and post-doctoral Research at the University of Calgary in Alberta Canada. In the nineties Ray worked as a NASA Research Fellow at the Johnston Space Center developing synthetic soils for long-duration space missions and Lunar and Martian outposts. He was also a Research and Education Fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Studies (CIRES) at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Since 2002, he has served as the founder and coordinator of The Penguin Bowl, a regional competition of the National Ocean Sciences Bowl, a quiz bowl for high school students from Kentucky, Ohio, Maryland and Pennsylvania. In 2006-09 he was the principal investigator for the 1.5 Million Dollar OPFERST project which provided high quality professional development to N.E. Ohio Science Teachers. He is a five-time winner of Youngstown State University’s Distinguished Professor Award and a winner of the National Science Teachers Association Ohaus Award for College Science Teaching.

Organization:

Youngstown State University

Job Title:

Distinguished Professor of Geology