Dr. Tom Turner received his Ph.D. in population biology from UC Davis in 2008. After finishing his postdoc at the Gregor Mendel Institute in Vienna, Austria, he became an assistant professor at UC Santa Barbara in 2009 and in 2015 began work as an associate professor. His work focuses on the diversity, systematics, and ecology of California sponges, particuarly the description of new species in shallow-water ecosystems such as kelp forests.