Dr. Dwight F. Coleman

Dr. Dwight F. Coleman is the Director of Research for the Institute for Exploration at Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut. He is also an Assistant Marine Research Scientist at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography.  He is responsible for leading oceanographic expeditions to survey underwater archaeological sites. He has participated in or led more than 20 oceanographic research cruises, including 10 expeditions for Dr. Robert Ballard and the team from the Institute for Exploration.

Most notable among the recent expeditions are the return to Titanic in June 2004, the search for John F. Kennedy’s PT-109 in May 2002;  several expeditions to map and document historical shipwrecks in Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, Lake Huron; and multiple missions to the Black Sea off Turkey and Bulgaria to map the undersea geology and explore, document, and sample well-preserved ships of antiquity. He was previously a research geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Woods Hole, Mass., and a support scientist at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, R.I.

Coleman, 37, has a bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of New Hampshire and master’s and doctoral degrees in marine geology and geophysics from the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography.