A research Scientist at the Institute of the Environment, Sagarin is a marine ecologist and environmental policy analyst. He has studied responses of marine communities and wetlands to climate change, illegal fishing, pollution and other human impacts. He also studies environmental philosophy and history and is currently documenting the revolutionary transformation in science back towards primarily observational, rather than experimental, methodologies.
Dr. Sagarin has served as a Geological Society of America Congressional Science Fellow in the office of U.S. Representative Hilda Solis. Sagarin has taught ecology and environmental policy at Duke University, California State University Monterey Bay, and University of California, Los Angeles. His research has appeared in Science, Nature, Conservation Biology, Ecological Monographs, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Foreign Policy, and other leading journals, magazines, and newspapers.