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Beneath the Sea, the largest consumer show in the recreational diving community, has named Richard Vann, Ph.D., its 2007 Diver of the Year for Science. Vann is the Vice President of Research at Divers Alert Network® (DAN®).
Each year Beneath the Sea (BTS) recognizes those who have made significant contributions to diving in the Sciences, Education and Continuing Service. The award will be presented at a special banquet on March 27 at the Beneath the Sea Dive Show in Secaucus, N.J.
Dan Orr, DAN President and CEO, described Vann as an active researcher at Duke University Medical Center, delving into areas of the safety and health of recreational and military divers.
“We congratulate Dr. Vann on this splendid and well-deserved recognition,” Orr said. “Along with his numerous contributions to recreational diver safety, he has conducted research in modeling and evaluating decompression tables as well as the prevention of decompression sickness in astronauts and in keeping U.S. Navy divers from becoming susceptible to oxygen toxicity.
“He has published results of his work in peer-reviewed scientific journals and in the popular recreational and technical diving magazines.”
Vann is a former U.S. Navy Seal. A respected researcher in the field of decompression theory, Vann is also an expert in diving and hyperbaric medicine and in the field of technical diving; he has taken a leadership
role in two major research projects funded by DAN:
- Flying After Diving. This research project continues to quantify the appropriate surface interval so that a diver may safely ascend to altitude. This ongoing project involves hundreds of volunteer sport divers being exposed to various simulated dive profiles in a hyperbaric chamber and surface intervals followed by simulated flights in a hypobaric chamber.
Data from this project was presented at a workshop in 2002 attended by representatives from all major recreational dive training associations, the U.S. military and commercial interests. The consensus result was a modification of current guidelines for sport divers and diving destinations as to the recommended surface interval before a flight home or, in some cases, when to drive to altitude following a diving excursion. This research project has had, and will continue to have, tremendous safety implications.
- Project Dive Exploration. Perhaps the single most ambitious research project of its kind ever attempted in the field of recreational diving, PDE involves using dive computers to collect data on dive profiles collected from active recreational divers around the world. This data will be downloaded into a computer database designed and administered under the direction of Vann and DAN Research.
Under Vann’s direction, researchers have developed unique data acquisition software created specifically for the collection of the massive amounts of data. In this effort, DAN Research has trained data collectors who will collect and transfer this data to DAN.
Vann has spent a career in environmental physiology or operational diving with emphasis on understanding the physiology of decompression sickness and on developing procedures to avoid it.
Beginning at Ocean Systems in 1967, he served as a diving engineer where, among other duties, he learned to compute decompression tables and acted as an experimental subject for dives to 650 feet (198 meter). This was followed by four years in the U.S. Navy, two of these as Diving Officer for Underwater Demolition 12.
Vann is involved in all aspects of dive research at DAN and Duke University Medical Center. After receiving a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at Duke in 1976, he joined the faculty at the Duke Center for Diving Medicine and Environmental Physiology, conducting research in bubble formation and inert gas exchange.
Vann developed decompression procedures for scientific diving and for the development of methods currently used by astronauts during extravehicular activity from the Space Station.
Vann said he was both pleased and honored to be the recipient of the Diver of the Year award from Beneath the Sea 2007. "This was made possible because DAN gave me the opportunity to work on issues related to diving safety," he said. "I feel very lucky.”
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