Dr. Brooks is President of TDI-Brooks Int’l , Inc. a company specializing in offshore research and survey studies for federal/state agencies as well as the oil industry.  TDI-Brooks was founded in May 1996.  The company owns and operates four (4) multi-use oceanographic research vessels.

Dr. Brooks was the founder and Director of  GERG at TAMU until Sept. 1995. As Director between 1975 and 1996, he built an organization specializing in high quality analytical, oceanographic and environmental research and services with annual revenues between 1991 and 1995 of around $10 million/year.  In August 1995, he directed a staff of ~130 people, including 28 Ph.D. level senior personnel, ~60 professional MS- and BS-level full-time research scientists and ~40 other staff.  He has been Project Director on many federal projects for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Minerals Management Service (MMS), Bureau of Ocean Energy Mgt (BOEM) the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and other state and federal agencies.  He has extensive experience in the management of large environmental and oceanographic projects as well as the technical competency in environmental and geochemistry, surface geochemical exploration, oil spill assessment, gas hydrates, chemosynthetic ecosystems, stable isotope geochemistry, and oceanography.  He has academic credentials consisting of 210+ peer-review publications including numerous publications in prestigious journals such as Science and Nature. He has served on many national committees, conferences and workshops.  He has chaired 19 M.S. and Ph.D. committees at TAMU.  He has won the Faculty Distinguished Achievement Award for Research awarded annually by the Association of Former Students of Texas A&M University.  He previously held an appointment in the Faculty of Toxicology at Texas A&M University as well as an Advisory Council Member, Southeast Advisory Council for Undersea Research and Education (SEACURE) for NOAA’s Undersea Research Center at UNCW (NURC).

Dr. Brooks at continues to manage federal projects such as the NOAA National Status and Trends (NS&T) Mussel Watch project, which is the premier, long standing coastal environmental monitoring program in the nation.  He is in his 20+ year of management of this project. He is also involved in the commercial and/or technical management of generally over $30 million yearly of industry sponsored projects many of which are multidisciplinary. Dr. Brooks has been conducting research and oil industry-sponsored service projects in the Gulf of Mexico for the last 35+ years.

As part of his surface geochemical exploration (SGE) studies, which he developed for industry in the early 1980’s, he has collected 10,000+ cores in the Gulf, mostly in the deep water. These SGE coring studies resulted and contributed to the discoveries of macro oil seepage, chemosynthetic communities, and gas hydrates in the Gulf of Mexico.  He was a co-discoverer of oil seep and chemosynthetic communities in the deep water Gulf of Mexico in 1985.  He made the first discoveries of thermogenic gas hydrates in the deep water Gulf of Mexico that was published in Science as well as participated in the initial discoveries of other oil-seep related phenomena including oil-stained cores on the continental slope, widespread occurrence of shallow and outcropping gas hydrates, brine seepage, and visible oil seepage to the sea surface.  In the late 80’s and early 90’s he was awarded extensive NOAA National Undersea Research Program (NURP) JOHNSON SEA-LINK, ALVIN, and Navy NR-1 submersible dive time in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Dr. Bernard received a Ph.D. in chemical oceanography from Texas A&M University in 1978. For the next two years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma School of Geology and Geophysics, Dr. Bernard taught graduate level courses in Organic Geochemistry and Isotope Geochemistry. In 1980, he accepted a position as Vice President of O.I. Analytical, Inc., a supplier of analytical instruments for the measurement of trace organics in water, soil, and air. While at OI, he was the director of R&D, designing and bringing to market instruments for the measurement of gases, volatiles, and petroleum hydrocarbons in the environment. In 1993 he was appointed Deputy Director of the Geochemical and Environmental Research Group of Texas A&M University, serving with his long-time friend and Director of GERG, Dr. James M. Brooks.

In 1996, Dr. Bernard partnered with Dr. Brooks in forming TDI-Brooks International, Inc., where he is a co-owner, Vice President, and Technology Director. TDI-Brooks is a Texas company that delivers high-quality field surveys, analytical services, and scientific interpretation, to the marine oil exploration, geotechnical, and environmental survey marketplace. Dr. Bernard has over 40 years of experience in natural gas geochemistry, including a career focus in the measurement and interpretation of molecular and isotopic compositions of the light hydrocarbon gases in the marine environment. His published models for the interpretation of the natural sources of light hydrocarbon gases have become commonly known in the scientific literature as “Bernard Plots” and are cited by investigators world wide in their research, papers, and presentations. The analytical methods he has developed for the measurement of the concentrations of interstitial gases in marine sediments are also in wide use, and have resulted in an accumulation of and data from over 30,000 cores taken in the continental shelves, slopes, and the deep water adjacent to continental margins worldwide. In addition, Dr. Bernard has led the development of several innovative seabed survey tools used in offshore geotechnical engineering surveys, including the TDI-Brooks CPT-Stinger, Gravity CPT tool, and an Auto-T-Bar instrument.

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