Bruce A. Menge

2026 Sigma Xi Fellow

Statement

"My experience with Sigma Xi has been through my graduate students and their applications for research funding from the Society of Sigma Xi. I’ve had 46 PhD students and 12 MS students during my career, and most have received a Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research. They and I are deeply appreciative of this source of funding for graduate research, and the recognition of the Society that such funding is an invaluable and relatively rare source of support for thesis projects."

Biography

Bruce A Menge is a Distinguished University Professor and the Wayne and Gladys Valley Endowed Professor of Marine Biology in the Department of Integrative Biology at Oregon State University.  He also served as Chair of the Department from 2008-2011.  His major research areas are marine community and meta-ecosystem ecology, physiological ecology, and he is currently focused on the impacts of climate change, including thermal stress, marine heatwaves, and ocean acidification on coastal marine ecosystems.  He received a BA in Zoology at the University of Minnesota in 1965 and a PhD in Zoology at the University of Washington in 1970 as an advisee of Robert T. Paine.  After a postdoctoral scholarship with Joseph H. Connell and William W. Murdoch at the University of California Santa Barbara, he took an Assistant Professorship at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. In 1976, he joined the Zoology Department (now the Department of Integrative Biology) at Oregon State University where he has been ever since. He is the lead PI in PISCO, the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans, and also led the OMEGAS consortium, the Ocean Margin Ecosystem Group for Acidification Studies.  He is an elected member and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Ecological Society of America. He belongs to the American Society of Naturalists and the Ecological Society of America.  Professor Menge has authored or co-authored >200 refereed research papers, which have been cited ~37,000 times with an h-index of 91 (i.e., 91 of his publications have been cited 91 times or more; Google Scholar).  Besides those listed above, Honors include the George Mercer Award (1979) for the Best Paper in Ecology during the previous year; a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1994-95); an Honorary Doctor of Science degree at Southampton College of Long Island University (1999); recognition as one of the 0.5% of the most cited ecologists over the past two decades (ISI Highly Cited.com, 2002); and the Western Society of Naturalists’ Lifetime Achievement Award (2010). Professor Menge takes great pride in his research program, through which he has advised or co-advised 46 PhD, 12 MS, and 22 Postdoctoral researchers, and 24 Undergraduate Honors students, many of whom have gone on to have stellar careers.