Leight leads projects that assess coastal habitat conditions and provide resource managers with information for decision making. He works with a broad team of stakeholders, including both federal and non-federal partners.
Leight received his Ph.D. in 2017 from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and his Masters of Science from the University of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1993. He started with NOAA as a contract employee at the NCCOS lab in Charleston, SC in 1995 and accepted his current federal position at the Cooperative Oxford Laboratory in 2002.