Professor Lihini Indira Aluwihare, is a tenured Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She received her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography in 1999, and her B.A. in Chemistry and Philosophy from Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, in 1993.

After completing two short Post Doctoral Investigations, first at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and subsequently, at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, she joined the University of California, San Diego faculty in 2001. She teaches both graduate and undergraduate classes at UCSD, runs a research lab that trains undergraduates, graduate students, and post doctoral investigators, and spends time at sea where she collects samples for her research.

At SIO she received the Geisel Faculty Career Development Award. She has also been recognized by the City of San Diego (San Diego Magazine’s 40 under 40) for her outreach work with underserved high school student populations. In addition to pursing her research and teaching interests, she is strongly committed to making science, and particularly, career paths in Earth and Environmental Science, more accessible to a broader audience (in the US and elsewhere).

She is married with one son and several dog children.