Professor
Current Research
Rick Murray’s marine biogeochemical research is oriented toward interpreting signatures of oceanographic, climatologic, and volcanic/tectonic processes recorded in marine sediment. He studies the paleoceanographic record at a variety of time scales, as well as modern processes that control chemical, microbiological, and isotopic distributions in sediment. His analytical work is based on state-of-the-art ICP-emission spectrometry and ICP-mass spectrometry, largely using the BU Analytical Geochemistry Laboratories. Murray and his graduate students are active participants on oceanographic research cruises that gather sediment (e.g., coring) as well as study modern oceanographic and geochemical processes, and have worked in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, the Cariaco Basin offshore of Venezuela, the northwestern Pacific, the South Pacific Gyre, and the central Atlantic Ocean. Murray is currently serving as Director of the Division of Ocean Sciences at the National Science Foundation, Directorate for Geosciences, while on temporary leave from Boston University.