Dr. Barbara A. Block holds the Charles and Elizabeth Prothro Professorship at Stanford University. Her research is focused on how large pelagic fish utilize the open ocean spanning from genomics to biologging. She and her team have pioneered the successful development and deployment of electronic tags on tunas, billfishes and sharks. The combination of lab and field research has led to a rapid increase in the understanding of movement patterns, population structure, physiology and behaviors of pelagic fish and sharks.

Dr. Block was Chief Scientist for the Tagging of Pacific Predators program (TOPP), organized under the Census of Marine Life. This international program, succeeded in placing 4000 electronic tags on 23 predators in the North Pacific to understand how pelagic animals use the North Pacific ecosystem. Block began her oceanographic career at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution with Dr. Francis Carey. She earned a Ph.D. in 1986 at Duke University. She was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and joined the Stanford faculty in 1994. Block has published 200 peer reviewed papers and has received the NSF Young Investigator Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, a Pew Fellowship for Marine conservation, the Rolex Award for Enterprise, and a Benchely Award for Ocean Science. Block founded the Tag-A-Giant (TAG) at The Ocean Foundation to elevate the science and conservation initiatives for bluefin tunas globally. Block has helped produce 5 films with Discovery, Disney and Nat Geo, the most recent award winning film on white sharks is called Blue Serengeti.

The Block lab examines the physiology of how large endothermic fish use the ocean with particular focus on thermogenesis and cardiac physiology in the cold.  Endothermy evolved in fish by using skeletal muscle as a source of heat. Swordfish and some tuna species can increase their RyR1 Ca²⁺ leak rate to amplify a basal ATP turnover rate at the sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca²⁺ pump that enables heat production beneath the brain and eye in modified extraocular muscles. Muscle-based thermogenesis is now known to be more widespread in mammals and birds and is essential for life for thermal regulation. Their lab uses comparative physiology, biologging and molecular technology to study how endothermy is utilized in the ocean environment.