Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant | University of Illinois

Staff Directory

Coastal Sediment Specialist

Susan Boehme

Dr. Susan Boehme is a coastal sediment specialist with IISG and a liaison to the U.S. EPA Great Lakes Legacy Program Office. As part of the Great Lakes Legacy Act, Susan works with communities and EPA staff around the Great Lakes region to remediate contaminated sediments in an effort to improve environmental and human health.  She is also currently working on three pollution prevention programs focusing on Safe Disposal of Unwanted Medicine, Alternatives to Burning Trash, and ecycling.

The Safe Disposal of Unwanted Medicine project has been honored with numerous awards, including the North American Hazardous Materials Management Association's 2007 Best Education Program Award, the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable's 2007 MVP Pollution Prevention Award- Honorable Mention, and the University of Illinois Extension 2008 Outstanding or Innovative Programming Team Award – State.

Susan received her Masters and Ph.D. in chemical oceanography from North Carolina State University.  Her graduate research and her postdoctoral work at Rutgers University and at the Max-Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology focused on sediment chemistry in shallow to deep sediments globally.  At the New York Academy of Sciences she was the director of the New York and New Jersey Harbor Pollution Prevention and Industrial Ecology Project.