Robert Ballard
President, Institute for Exploration
Born June 30, 1942, in Wichita, Kansas, Robert D. Ballard grew up in San Diego, California. He earned a Ph.D. in marine geology and geophysics from the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, where he is currently a full-time faculty member. He spent 30 years at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts, where he spearheaded the development of manned submersibles and remotely operated vehicles for marine research.
In 1989, Ballard created the JASON Project, an educational program designed to inspire in students a lifelong passion to pursue learning in science, math, and technology through exploration and discovery. In 2002, he and Dr. Stephen Coan founded Immersion Learning, a distance education program based at the Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration, to extend the reach to after-school audiences, particularly at-risk-youth. Ballard developed telecommunications technology to create “telepresence,” which allows hundreds of thousands of children to accompany him from afar on undersea explorations around the globe.
Throughout his career, Ballard has conducted more than a hundred deep-sea expeditions, using both manned and unmanned vehicles. Beginning in 1973, Ballard participated in his first international expedition, Project FAMOUS (the French-American Mid-Ocean Undersea Study). This was the first manned exploration of the Mid-Ocean Ridge which helped to confirm the newly emerging theory of plate tectonics and won wide acclaim within the oceanographic community. In 1975, Ballard conducted an expedition to the Cayman Trench where he recovered unusual rocks that helped scientists better understand the internal composition of Earth’s crust. In 1977, Ballard was co-chief scientist of the Galapagos Rift expedition that discovered hydrothermal vents and their exotic ecosystems based on “chemosythesis.” By 1979, Ballard was the scientist in charge of the ANGUS exploration program on the East Pacific Rise that discovered the first “black smokers,” a discovery that helped for the first time to explain the chemistry of the world’s oceans. In 1982, Ballard organized the Deep Submergence Laboratory (DSL) at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to begin developing the sophisticated remotely operated vehicle (ROV) system known as Argo-Jason – a deep-towed vehicle carrying sensitive video cameras connected to the surface by fiber-optic cable through which broadcast quality images could be transmitted. Developed with support of the U.S. Navy and tested in 1984, Ballard would use this system for his best-known expedition, the discovery of the RMS Titanic.
Ballard has also researched many warships lost during WWII. In 1989, Ballard discovered the German warship Bismark, which was sunk by the British during a savage battle in the Atlantic during WWII. In 1992, Ballard explored Iron Bottom Sound off Guadalcanal, which holds a large deep-water collection of sunken warships, including the giant Japanese warship Kirishima. In 1993, Ballard explored the Lusitania’s wreck site using the ROV Jason as well as other research vehicles, confirming that the ship’s magazine remained intact and that the U-20’s torpedo penetrated a coal bunker, which ignited and exploded. In 2002, Ballard went in search of PT-109, commanded by John F. Kennedy in WWII.
Some of Ballard’s recent discoveries include the Mediterranean Sea finds of sunken remains of ships along ancient trade routes, two ancient Phoenician ships off Israel, the oldest shipwrecks ever found in deep water, and four 1,500-year-old wooden ships—one almost perfectly preserved—in the Black Sea.
Today, through his Immersion Learning program, he uses Internet2 and Web technologies to bring thousands of students into direct contact with his expedition team while on location around the globe. Immersion is the main educational outreach partner of Ballard's Institute for Exploration.
Founded in 1997 by Ballard, the Institute for Exploraiton (IFE) moved to Mystic, Connecticut in 2000, joining forces with Mystic Aquarium. IFE has focused on the development of a suite of remotely operated vehicles, including the ROV Hercules, created specifically to conduct deep-water archaeological excavation to professional archaeological standards. Designed by a team of engineers, archaeologists, and marine geologists, Hercules uses sophisticated manipulation, optical, and acoustic sensors. Hercules was successfully field tested in the Black Sea in 2003 and has since participated in expeditions around the globe.
Ballard recently developed a joint M.A./Ph.D program in the new field of archaeological oceanography at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography. He is a member of the NOAA Science Advisory Board and serves as one of 16 Commissioners on the President’s Commission on Ocean Policy. Ballard lives in Connecticut.