Maya Tolstoy received her Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. In 1996, she was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University where she still works as a Doherty Research Scientist. Her interests include mid-ocean ridge processes, the links between earthquakes and life, hydroacoustic monitoring and impacts of anthropogenic noise on marine mammals. She has spent more than a year at sea on a total of 26 cruises, for 14 of which she was chief or co-chief scientist.