Dr. Dionne Hoskins- Brown received her B.S. degree in Marine Biology from Savannah State College in 1992 and her doctorate in Marine Sciences from the University of South Carolina in 1999. She worked briefly as a postdoctoral fellow in the newly established Marine, Environmental Science, and Biotechnology Research Center at SSU in 1999 but was tasked in 2000 by the Southeast Fisheries Science Center (SEFSC) of NOAA Fisheries to develop a Cooperative Marine Education and Research (CMER) program at the university, the first of its kind at a Historically Black University. Since then, she has worked as a Fishery Biologist through the Galveston Laboratory of NOAA Fisheries and as an Associate Graduate Professor in the Marine Science program at SSU.

She is based in Savannah and works with undergraduate and graduate students on a variety of ecological research topics. As a benthic ecologist, her research interests revolve around the ecology of deposit feeding organisms in marine sediments. However, recent projects have examined the recovery of a transplanted marsh, the effects of fishing and disease on blue crab populations, and seasonal fluctuations of macrofaunal and microbial communities in shallow sediments.



Dr. Hoskins-Brown also hosts high school students in her lab and teaches graduate courses in benthic ecology and advanced environmetrics.