Biography

Dr. Dana Yoerger is a Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a researcher in marine robotics. He supervises the research and academic program of graduate students studying oceanographic engineering through the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in the areas of control, robotics, and design.  Dr. Yoerger has been a key contributor to the remotely-operated vehicle Jason; to the Autonomous Benthic Explorer known as ABE; most recently, to the autonomous underwater vehicle, Sentry; and the hybrid remotely operated vehicle, Nereus which reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench in 2009.  Dr. Yoerger has gone to sea on over 80 oceanographic expeditions exploring the Mid-Ocean Ridge, mapping underwater seamounts and volcanoes, surveying ancient and modern shipwrecks, studying the environmental effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the recent effort that located the Voyage Data Recorder from the merchant vessel El Faro. His current research focuses on robots for exploring the midwater regions of the world's ocean. He heads a team developing a new underwater robot called Mesobot designed to track midwater targets such as zooplankton that play an important role in the movement of carbon through the world’s oceans. He was the 2009 recipient of the Lockheed Award for Ocean Science and Engineering and serves on the Research Board for BP's Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative. He recently served as interim Director of WHOI's Center for Marine Robotics and recently held the Walter A. and Hope Noyes Smith Chair for Excellence in Oceanography. He was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 2021 for the development of autonomous underwater vehicles for deep-ocean exploration and science.