Jere Lipps is Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California (Berkeley) and Curator of Paleontology at the UC (Berkeley) Museum of Paleontology. Aside from being past director of that Museum he is also a past president of the Paleontological Society. His research concerns the evolutionary biology and ecology of marine organisms, protists in particular. This involves studies of modern species and of particular problems in the fossil record. Presently, he is participating in studies concerning the biology and molecular phylogeny of coral reefs (Papua New Guinea, Enewetak Atoll, French Polynesia) and California foraminifera with the aim of better understanding the fossil record of these forms. Paleobiologic projects include the evolution of the earliest shelled protists in the Precambrian and Cambrian and the biologic constraints on mass extinctions and radiations. These projects are mostly field oriented utilizing SCUBA in the modern studies and extended geologic work in the paleobiologic studies.

Photograph: Jere Lipps on the Arctic sea ice near Barrow, Alaska, with the NASA Europa Focus Group. Jere and the group, led in April 2003 by Ron Greeley of Arizona State University, examined the sea ice from the air and snowmobiles, in search of analogous features to those seen in Galileo images from Europa. Cores were taken in the ice to study the organisms living near the base of the ice or trapped in it.