Tim Essington in an associate professor at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences in the U.S. Essington’s research and teaching aims to better understand human impacts on marine food webs and to identify policy instruments that are most effective at minimizing them. He works in diverse ecosystems, ranging from estuaries to coastal and open oceans, and uses a wide range of quantitative tools to evaluate how ecological systems respond to fishing and other disturbances. He also serves as a principal scientist with the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington where he leads work that seeks to better understand the consequences of climate change on regional fishery ecosystems.
Essington is a member of several advisory and editorial boards. Currently he co-chairs the Scientific Steering Committee for the joint U.S. National Science Foundation and National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA) research program “Comparative Analysis of Marine Ecosystem Organization.” He also has been on the Science Advisory Board for the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. He currently serves on the NOAA Science Advisory Board Ecosystem Science and Management Working Group. He is actively engaged in fostering ecosystem-based management at a regional level, presently co-authoring a comprehensive assessment of the biophysical status of the Puget Sound ecosystem.
Essington received a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from the University of Michigan in 1991, a Master of Science degree in fisheries and wildlife conservation from the University of Minnesota in 1995, and a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1999. He served on the faculty of Stony Brook University for two years before joining the faculty of the University of Washington in 2003.