Alert Diver Category: Researcher Profile

Melissa Ilardo, PhD, is passionate about working in the distinct field of genetic analyses on individuals, primarily in Indigenous populations who have adapted to unique lifestyles or environments.

Pieter-Jan van Ooij, MD, PhD, is the head of the Department of Research, Innovation, and Education at the Royal Netherlands Navy’s Diving Medical Centre (DMC).

Born in Uruguay in 1982, Alejandro Garbino, MD, PhD, has been fascinated with air and sea since he was young. His passion for the air stemmed from an uncle who flew banner airplanes along the beach.

Known for her work in developing sophisticated algorithms and methods for managing and coordinating complex systems, Silvia Ferrari has applied her expertise to integrating scuba diving technology with robotic systems.

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Shields Lab — led by Wyatt Shields, PhD, an assistant professor of
chemical and biological engineering — are investigating how engineered microparticles, specifically designed for use in biomedicine, can be used in areas such as biosensing, where they bind to certain molecules or cells to enable drug delivery and the detection of biological conditions.

Jens-Christian Meiners, Ph.D., a professor of physics and biophysics at the University of Michigan, focuses his laboratory’s research on mechanics of biological systems, primarily the dynamical properties of DNA and DNA–protein complexes. Meiners and his team are currently working on tissue mechanics and tissue damage through gas bubbles in the spinal cord, or spinal cord decompression sickness (DCS), which won him the 2019 DAN/R.W. “Bill” Hamilton Memorial Dive Medicine Research Grant.

In 2021 Peter Buzzacott, PhD, of  Curtin University in Perth, Australia, received DAN’s Alfred Bove Research Grant for Cardiac Health in Scuba Diving. What began with a simple proposal has since developed into a training network for the next generation of scientists and led to a research network between Curtin University and Fiona Stanley Hospital in Western Australia.

During medical school Peter Lindholm joined a laboratory researching aviation, space and underwater physiology, where he developed a passion for breath-hold dive physiology, about which he wrote his doctoral thesis. As one of the physicians for the Swedish Sports Diving Federation (SSDF), he was involved in developing breath-hold dive protocols and training the first instructors of competitive breath-hold diving. After clinical training as a radiologist, Lindholm moved to San Diego, California, where he leads a research group focused on dive physiology and dive medicine.

The Center for Research and Education in Special Environments (CRESE) at the University at Buffalo in New York is at the forefront of environmental physiology research, investigating how various environmental stressors impact human health and performance.