Masako Tominaga

Masako Tominaga is a marine geophysicist who left the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to join the University of Bremen, Germany, as a professor of marine geology in the Faculty of Geosciences and MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, announced in July 2026.

A native of Japan, Tominaga moved to the United States in 2002 and earned her master's (2005) and PhD (2009) in geological oceanography from Texas A&M University, following an undergraduate degree in natural resource and environmental engineering from Waseda University in Tokyo. She held faculty positions at Michigan State University and Texas A&M before joining WHOI, where she rose to Associate Scientist with tenure and, in 2024, was named the Henry A. Stommel Chair in Oceanography.

Tominaga's research examines the structure of the ocean floor and the deep-sea processes that transport heat, water, and chemicals through the Earth's crust beneath the ocean, with implications for climate and marine ecosystems. She has logged more than 850 days at sea across 31 research cruises, serving as chief or co-chief scientist on 11 of them, and has used geophysical and geochemical measurement technologies to study environments ranging from hydrothermal vents to ice-covered polar regions. Her move to Bremen is supported by the Wubben Stiftung Wissenschaft foundation's Advanced Professorship Program.