Pomponi, Shirley – Liberatore, Don

Dr. Pomponi is President and CEO of HBOI and has authored or co-authored more than 80 publications on marine biotechnology and biodiversity. Having led numerous research expeditions worldwide and logged more than 200 submersible dives, she chairs the NRC’s Ocean Studies Board, and serves on the Executive Committee of the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education, the U.S. Committee for the Census of Marine Life, and the Board of Trustees of the Women Divers Hall of Fame, into which she was inducted in 2003. Don Liberatore has been with HBOI since October 1977 and serves as Manager, Undersea Vehicles, and Chief Submersible Pilot for all HBOI manned vehicles. With over1,700 dives as a submersible pilot and over 200 as J-S-L diver/tender including mixed gas lock-outs to 300 feet, he has participated in the search and recovery of the Space Shuttle Challenger, excavation and documentation of the U.S.S. Monitor and the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, and trips to the Galapagos Islands and Cuba to for the Discovery Channel, and IMAX Corporation.