David Doolette is the Scientific Director of the U.S. Navy Experimental Diving Unit and an Associate Professor of Anaesthesiology at the University of Auckland. He has more than three
decades of research, development, testing, evaluation, and operationalization of new diving technologies. He is a leading international expert in the physiology, prevention, and treatment of decompression sickness. Other areas of expertise include saturation-excursion diving, submarine lock-in/out diving, closed-circuit rebreather diving, diver thermal protection, and diver fitness. In addition to contributions to the scientific literature, he has authored many military technical reports, contributed to the U.S. Navy Diving Manual, and written many other specialized diving procedures. He began diving in 1979, is a pioneer of technical diving, and an avid underwater cave explorer. He engages frequently with the recreational and technical diving communities as scientific communicator and has made profound impact on the way these communities dive. In recognition of outstanding contributions to undersea biomedical science, the U.S. Navy, and recreational and technical diving, he is a recipient of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Delores M. Etter Award, the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society (UHMS) Albert R. Behnke Award and the U.S. Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Award. He has been a member of the Undersea Hyperbaric Medical Society since 1987 and a member of the South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society since 1990 and was that Society's Education Officer from 2001 to 2004.