Lisa Kerr, Ph.D.

After leading the Quantitative Fisheries Research Lab at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute for over a decade, Dr. Kerr now joins the University of Maine as one of two faculty members based at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, Maine. These positions are part of an ongoing partnership between the two institutions designed to advance scientific understanding of the effects of climate change and ecosystem shifts on fisheries in the Gulf of Maine.

In October 2022, Dr. Lisa Kerr joined the University of Maine’s School of Marine Science as Associate Professor of Fisheries Science. In her new role, Dr. Kerr will lead research that informs sustainable management of marine fisheries and ecosystems.

Her current work is focused on integrating climate information into fishery stock assessment and management to support climate resilience of fisheries and ecosystems. She will be teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in fisheries science and mentoring students. 

Lisa employs a diverse skill set to address critical ecological questions that are also directly applicable to fisheries management. Her expertise includes structural analysis of fish hard parts (e.g. otoliths, vertebrae) and the application of the chemical methods (stable isotope, radioisotope, and trace element analysis) to these structures. She also uses mathematical modeling as a tool to understand how biocomplexity within fish stocks (e.g., spatial structure, connectivity, life cycle diversity) impacts their response to natural climatic oscillations, climate change, fishing, and management measures.

Other skills used to address questions about stock structure, movement patterns, and basic life history of fish include bioenergetics modeling, fish tagging, statistics, and larval cohort analysis.