David Mindell, assistant professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society, has been awarded the 1999 Doherty Professorship in Ocean Utilization from the MIT Sea Grant College Program.
Every year, the program selects one new faculty member for a supplemental award of $25,000 per year for two years.
With 10 years of experience going to sea on scientific projects and a lifelong interest in combining engineering and the humanities, Dr. Mindell is now concentrating on deep-sea archeology. His Doherty-funded research fuses the culture of archaeology with that of deep submergence. Missions thus far have found Roman and Carthaginian shipwrecks more than a mile deep in the Mediterranean off the coast of Sicily.
In upcoming field work, Dr. Mindell, colleagues and students will travel to the Black Sea and search for ancient shipwrecks in 7,000 feet of water.
In 1997, Bettina Voelker, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was awarded the two-year chair for her proposal to study the fate and ecotoxicological effects of pollutant metals in coastal waters.
The Doherty Fellowship, endowed by the Henry L. and Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation, encourages promising, nontenured professors to undertake marine-related research that will further innovative uses of the ocean's resources. The area of research may address any aspect of marine use and/or management, whether social, political, environmental or technological.
A version of this article appeared in the March 31, 1999 issue of MIT Tech Talk (Volume 43, Number 24).
