Mridula Srinivasan, Ph.D.
Mridula Srinivasan, Ph.D.
Dr. Mridula Srinivasan is the Director of the Marine Mammal and Turtle Division of the NOAA's Southeast Fisheries Science Center.
Mridula Srinivasan has a doctoral degree in wildlife and fisheries sciences from Texas A & M University. Previously, she earned degrees in environmental management from Florida Tech (MS) and zoology & molecular biology (B.Sc. (Honors) and M.Sc.), from the University of Delhi, India.
Besides overseeing the Marine Mammal and Turtle Division at the Southeast Fisheries Science Center, Mridula is interested in investigating the ecological and social determinants of animal decision-making as it relates to their distribution, habitat use, foraging and social behavior, and species interactions at the community level. She is especially interested in predator-prey interactions involving social predators and investigating the ecological and evolutionary consequences of anti-predator behavior, which are akin to the effects of human-caused and environmental stressors, including climate change on marine mammals and marine ecosystems. She is also actively involved in supporting marine mammal education, research, and stranding response, especially in India.
Mridula joined NOAA as a 2009 Sea Grant Knauss Fellow at NOAA Research’s Office of International Activities. Thereafter, she worked at the Office of Science and Technology, where she set up the Protected Species Science Program and then served as Chief, Protected Species Science Branch for four years. During her time at NOAA, she was the 2019 Scientific Committee for Ocean Research (SCOR) Visiting Scholar and the 2017 U.S. Department of State Embassy Science Fellow. She also held a joint appointment as a Visiting Research Scientist at Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC), University of Maryland, College Park.
Dr. Srinivasan also served as Special Advisor to the NOAA Assistant Secretary for Environmental Prediction and Observations, Dr. Michael Morgan from 2023-2025, supporting the integration of HPC, Cloud, and AI/ML in data assimilation and numerical weather prediction, and other NOAA earth system sciences to advance NOAA’s mission.
Meet Mridula Srinivasan, Marine Mammal and Turtle Division Director.