Web Coordinator, Public Affairs Specialist - NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration and Research
Keeley Belva is the public affairs specialist for NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER) and works to tell people about the exciting things happening at OER. She is a recent transplant to the Washington, DC, area, having spent the last several years in Honolulu working for NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. She holds a degree in environmental studies from the University of Hawaii`i and appreciates the opportunity to spend time outside and on the water again!
National Maritime Heritage Coordinator/Diver - Office of National Marine Sanctuaries
Tane Casserley, the National Maritime Heritage Coordinator for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, specializes in 19th century warships and deep-water archaeology. Casserly holds a graduate certificate in maritime archaeology from the University of Hawaii and a master's degree from the Program in Maritime Studies at East Carolina University. He has led NOAA archaeological expeditions in the Florida Keys, the Great Lakes, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Alaska, the USS Monitor, he dove with the National Park Service on a sunken B-29 in Lake Mead, and most recently served as principal investigator on an expedition to document three German U-boats from the WWII Battle of the Atlantic off the coast of North Carolina. Casserly's projects have used technical diving, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), and manned submersibles. He is a dive instructor and certified trimix and closed-circuit rebreather diver with the National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI), as well as the Nautical Archaeology Society Senior Tutor for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
National Maritime Heritage Coordinator/Diver - Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary
Catherine Green is an underwater archaeologist specializing in outreach and education programs with Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Green combines her background in nautical archaeology with her experience teaching on shipboard education programs to bring the maritime heritage resources of the sanctuary program to a wide audience. She holds an MA in maritime history and nautical archaeology from East Carolina University and a BA in history and fine art from Indiana University. Over the past 12 years, she has worked on many underwater archaeology projects, ranging in location from the Great Lakes to Micronesia and including working for the Office of the State Underwater Archaeologist in Wisconsin for 4 years before joining the staff at Thunder Bay in 2004. She has also taught a variety of maritime subjects while sailing the East and West Coasts, the Caribbean, Hawaii, and the Great Lakes, including five years with Long Island University’s SEAmester program. She is also a NOAA scientific diver and Nautical Archaeology Society (NAS) instructor.
Principal Investigator, Deputy Superintendent/Research Coordinator - Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary
Russ Green is the deputy superintendent and research coordinator at the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Alpena, Michigan. A former underwater archaeologist for the state of Wisconsin, Green obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Rhode Island and a graduate degree in maritime archaeology from East Carolina University. He’s worked on dozens of maritime archeology projects along much of the east coast, the Great Lakes, Bermuda, and Micronesia. Trained in mixed gas and rebreather diving, Green has led several technical diving expeditions in the Great Lakes, and worked on the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor off North Carolina. He recently led the documentation of four historic shipwrecks resting in 200 feet (ft) of water in northern Lake Huron and assisted with the documentation of World War II shipwrecks in 240 ft of water in North Carolina’s “Graveyard of the Atlantic.”
Project Manager - Applied Research Laboratories, The University of Texas at Austin
Jonathan Hartje specializes in designing and implementing real-time software architectures focused on the processing of high-rate scientific data for numerous underwater vehicles. The sonar systems built at Applied Research Laboratories: University of Texas (ARL:UT) are found in multiple U.S. Navy sonar programs and hosted on manned and autonomous underwater vehicles. Currently, Hartje is leading a small team of engineers and computer programmers to design a new hardware and software architecture. This new system architecture will host all the computer programs which process sonar data to generate images of the seafloor, autonomously detect objects on the seafloor, and control the path of the vehicle. Hartje holds a BS in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MS in software engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
Engineering Scientist Associate - Applied Research Laboratories, The University of Texas at Austin
Clinton Johnson is an engineering scientist associate at the Applied Research Laboratories: University of Texas at Austin (ARL:UT). He graduated from Texas A&M University with a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering in 2004. He continued his studies at Texas A&M while working on electro-magnetic suspension systems for energy storage flywheels. Through his research he completed two flights on NASA's reduced gravity aircraft (aka the Vomit Comet). He joined ARL in 2006 to work on sonar system design. His work involves sonar transducer design, testing, and fabrication, as well as sonar system design, testing, and fabrication. His role also includes operating and maintaining an autonomous underwater vehicle sonar system with a sonar system developed and fabricated by ARL. His work with ARL has taken him to various places, including Hawaii and Australia.
Principal Investigator, Senior Engineering Scientist - Applied Research Laboratories, The University of Texas at Austin
Charles Loeffler is a senior engineering scientist at the Applied Research Laboratories with the University of Texas at Austin (ARL:UT). He received degrees in electrical engineering and digital signal processing from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Rice University in Houston, Texas, respectively. After finishing graduate school, he taught at Colorado State University and then joined ARL in 1988. During his time at ARL, he was “on-loan” to the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and a program sponsor for sonar sensor and systems. ARL introduced him to the world of underwater acoustics, where he has developed multi-ping processing schemes to build images of the sea floor from data of various sonar systems, as well as high-speed array geometry-specific algorithms to process thousands of channels of data from these sonar systems. This research has taken him to experiments in various locations, including the lab’s tanks, ARL’s Lake Travis Test Station, a small boat in the Chesapeake Bay, on large ships in the Pacific, and in a few submarines.
Engineering Scientist Associate - Applied Research Laboratories, The University of Texas at Austin
Mark Story is an engineering scientist associate at the Applied Research Laboratories: University of Texas at Austin (ARL:UT). He studied electrical engineering for bachelor's and a master's degrees at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and for a doctorate at UT at Austin. He worked at ARL:UT as a research assistant during graduate school in 2005. After deciding that he enjoyed working with sonar and living in Austin, he accepted a full time position at ARL and has continued to work with sonar systems. He likes to use signal processing and system theory to make sonar images and acoustic seafloor maps as clear as possible.
Education and Outreach Coordinator - Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary
Sarah Waters is a maritime archaeologist and the education and outreach coordinator with the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. She holds an MA in maritime history and nautical archaeology from East Carolina University and a BA in parks and recreation management and anthropology from Michigan State University. Waters has worked on terrestrial and underwater archaeology projects throughout the United States and is a former college semester-at-sea program instructor. She has also worked as a maritime museum curator and educator.
