A native of Texas, Dr. Sherri A. Mason (aka “Sam”) earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin.  She completed her doctorate in Chemistry at the University of Montana as a NASA Earth System Science scholar. She is currently a Professor of Chemistry and chair of the Department of Geology & Environmental Sciences at the State University of New York at Fredonia. As co-PI on the first-ever survey for plastic pollution within the open waters of the (Laurentian) Great Lakes, her research group is among the first to study the prevalence and impact of plastic pollution within freshwater ecosystems and, as such, has been featured within hundreds of mass media articles including the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. The Great Lakes Plastic Pollution Survey formed the basis for the Microbeads-Free Water Act, which bans the manufacture and use of microbeads within personal care products effective July 2018, signed into law by President Obama in December 2015. In April 2016, as the result of a nomination by US Senator Kristin Gillibrand (NY), Dr. Mason was named a 2016 EPA Environmental Champion owing to her research and advocacy work on microplastic pollution.

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