The Deepsea Challenger Expedition Seminar
- Time:
- 11:00 - 12:00
- Date:
- 7 December 2012
- Venue:
- Building 28, Room 2001
For more information regarding this seminar, please telephone Sue Smith on 02380592316 or email s.b.smith@soton.ac.uk .
Event details
SMMI is delighted to announce that we are hosting a visit by Ron Allum. Ron was co-designer, lead engineer and pilot of Deepsea Challenger, the full ocean depth submersible that James Cameron took to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in March this year.
Ron has kindly agreed to give a talk to staff and students about the Deepsea Challenger expedition which will include images from the expedition and will also highlight his work with James Cameron on RMS Titanic, the German battleship Bismark and deep sea hydrothermal vents.
You are invited to come along and enjoy what promises to be a fascinating talk.
Speaker information
Ron Allum, Ron Allum Deepsea Systems Pty Ltd . Ron Allum has played a key role in of some of the most daring and audacious explorations of our planet. In 1983 he was a dive leader on a world record 6.24 kilometre exploration of Cocklebiddy Cave which runs under Australia’s vast Nullarbor Plain. He later joined a documentary team and went onto explore the cave systems of Mexico, Florida, the Bahamas and the Caribbean, and the ice caves of Alaska. In 2001 he joined Hollywood Director, James Cameron’s expedition team where his quiet manner and unique ability to adapt, design, and build specialist equipment for use on Russian Mir submersibles earned him the title of “The Professor” aboard ship. For Cameron’s most recent expedition Ron co-designed, built and piloted, Deepsea Challenger which Cameron took 11 kilometres down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench on 26 March of this year. Since that time Ron and James Cameron established Ron Allum Deepsea Systems to make Deepsea Challenger’s technology available to science and industry. These technology’s include Isofloat®, the structural syntactic foam that Ron developed to form Deepsea Challenger’s chassis and floatation. Ron has no formal training or degree, however his extraordinary skills and achievements were recognized earlier year when he was nominated for Companion of Engineers Australia and then for one of Australia’s most prestigious awards, Senior Australian of the Year.