André W. Droxler, Ph.D., until his recent retirement in July 2020, was a professor, currently Emeritus Professor, in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Rice University. His research has focused on studying the morphology of and the sediments accumulating on slopes and basin floors surrounding coral reefs and carbonate platforms. Over the past 40 years, he has conducted research programs in the Bahamas, offshore Jamaica, along the Belize margin, in the western Gulf of Mexico, in the Maldives (Indian Ocean), along the Australian Great Barrier Reef and in the Gulf of Papua (Papua New Guinea).
The main focuses of Droxler’s research, as a marine geologist/oceanographer, include the regional and global evolution of coral reefs, the paleo-oceanographic/climatic and sea level records archived in the sediments deposited around reefs and carbonate platforms. Droxler has also focused his research on some ancient fossil reef systems, in particular recently some Late Cambrian microbial buildups spectacularly outcropping in Central Texas. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the American Chemical Society and numerous grants from oil and gas companies.
Droxler has published more than 150 scientific publications and has edited two books, including “Earth’s Climate and Orbital Eccentricity: The Marine Isotope Stage 11 Question” (2003). Before becoming an assistant professor at Rice in January 1987, he was a postdoctoral research scientist at the University of South Carolina from 1985 to 1986. Droxler received his master’s degree equivalent from the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland) in 1978 and earned his Ph.D. from the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Miami (Florida) in 1984.
