Sherri A. Mason (aka “Sam”) Director of Sustainability at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. She was a NASA Earth System Science scholar and her research group was among the first to study the prevalence and impact of plastic pollution within freshwater ecosystems.

Her work formed the basis for the Microbeads-Free Water Act, which was signed into law by President Obama in December 2015. Sam was EPA Environmental Champion in 2016; Excellence in Environmental Research by the Earth Month Network in 2017 and the Heinz Award in Public Policy in 2018