Barbara Bekins is a Research Hydrologists with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Menlo Park, California. She received a B.A. in Mathematics from University of California, Los Angeles. She worked for eight years as a computer specialist in the Seismology Branch of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and during this time earned an M.S. in Mathematics from San Jose State University in 1988. She earned a Ph.D. in Geology in 1993 from the University of California, Santa Cruz under the direction of Shirley Dreiss. Her thesis research focused on numerical modeling of groundwater flow and solute transport. From 1993-1997 she was a post-doctoral researcher at the USGS with funding from the U.S. EPA, modeling the biodegradation of groundwater contaminants. In 1997, she joined the USGS staff as a Research Hydrologist. She was a member of the National Research Council’s Committee on Intrinsic Remediation from 1998-2000, which produced the book Natural Attenuation for Groundwater Remediation. Barbara is a fellow of both the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America (GSA). She served as a GSA Birdsall-Driess distinguished lecturer 2003-2004 and JOI/USSAC Distinguished Lecturer, 2002-2003. She sailed as a shipboard scientist on Ocean Drilling Program Leg 171A to the Lesser Antilles subduction zone in 1997, Leg 201 to the Peru Margin in 2002 and Expedition 366 to the Mariana Convergent Margin in 2016-2017. She serves as research coordinator for the USGS National Crude Oil Spill Fate and Natural Attenuation Research Site near Bemidji, Minnesota, USA.