2024 Thoracic and Pulmonary Issues in Diving Pre-course

Dr. Bruce Derrick, MD is a undersea & hyperbaric medicine specialist in Durham, NC. He currently practices at Duke Hyperbaric Medicine Clinic and is affiliated with Duke University Hospital. Dr. Derrick is board certified in Emergency Medicine. He is an Assistant Professor of Surgery, Dept. of Emergency Medicine; Attending Physician - Center for Hyperbaric Medicine & Environmental Physiology, and Emergency Department, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC.

Dr. Sadler is an Undersea & Hyperbaric Medicine Specialist, Medical Director for Dive Rescue International, Ft. Collins, CO & works with Delta P Medical Consultants LLC in La Jolla, CA 

Dr. Frauke Tillmans is the Research Director at Divers Alert Network (DAN), adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and a visiting scientist at the University of California, San Diego. She holds a Master’s degree in Neuroscience, and a PhD in Human Biology. Dr. Tillmans now oversees DAN’s research initiatives in diving injury and fatality monitoring, population health, and diving physiology including acute diving injuries as well as long-term health effects of extreme exposures. Throughout her career she has participated in numerous projects covering a variety of medical aspects in recreational, professional, and military diving. Starting in 2019 when she left a position at the German Naval Medical Institute to relocate to the United States, she has become DAN’s point of contact for global scientific collaborations and is in charge of DAN’s research grant program and STEM-focused internship program, inspiring young scientists and prospective physicians to pursue a career in diving and hyperbaric medicine.

Dr. Caruso the Chief Medical Examiner and Coroner for Denver, CO, a position he has held since retiring from the Navy in 2014.  During his 30-year Navy career he was both a Navy Undersea Medical Officer and a Navy Flight Surgeon. He completed his Pathology training at Duke University Medical Center and his Forensic Pathology training at the Maryland Medical Examiner’s Office in Baltimore.  Additionally, he completed a formal Fellowship in Hyperbaric Medicine at Duke and passed the subsequent board examination given by the American Board of Preventive medicine, the only Forensic Pathologist to do so.  He is a Fellow of the UHMS and has numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters to his credit.  He has also been a part of the physician team for the Divers Alert Network since 1994, providing training and reviewing diving-related deaths.

John R. Clarke, Ph.D., FUHM, is an American scientist, private pilot, author, and inventor. He served the U.S. Navy for 39 years, 27 years as Scientific Director of the Navy Experimental Diving Unit (NEDU). Before that, he conducted pulmonary research at the Navy Medical Research Institute (NMRI) in Bethesda, MD. Clarke is recognized as a leading authority on rebreather engineering. He has an extensive academic career in biological and physiological sciences and graduated from the U.S. Navy/NOAA Scientist in the Sea Program. At NMRI, he researched the effects of saturation at great depth (1000 feet and deeper) on Navy divers. He conducted pulmonary research on dives to 1500 feet of seawater at NEDU in Florida and 450 meters at GUSI in Germany. In 2020, he assisted the Covid Task Force and Wilcox Industries in designing, testing, and producing an FDA-approved ventilator. Twenty years before, he assisted in developing and testing a novel SCBA for use by Navy SEALs. In 2022, he received the Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences NOGI Award for Science.

Dr Juan Valdivia-Valdivia (or “Juani” in the freediving community) was born in Lima Peru,completed surgery internship at UIC-MGH in Chicago and completed residency in Neurological surgery at the University of Arizona department of Neurosurgery.

Having completed a fellowship in Complex and Reconstructive Spine Surgery at the University of Michigan Department of Neurosurgery and a fellowship in Neurosurgical Oncology at Emory University, Dr Valdivia served as Assistant professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Michigan and Chief of Neurosurgery at the Ann Arbor VA healthcare System until January 2015. He moved to Tampa, after taking his first freediving lesson in Long Island,Bahamas, a lesson that would change his life.

He is a member of the AIDA (International Association for the development of Apnea) Medical & Science Committee, and the AIDA DC. He has contributed to the AIDA Black-out guidelines, lung squeeze guidelines, medical equipment for competition guidelines and is director of communications for the AIDA Medical committee, serving under Dr Oleg Melikhov.  He is the current medical director for the United States freediving federation, and team doctor for the USA Women’s spearfishing team.  He holds multiple Peruvian national records for depth and pool for breath-hold diving.He is the founder and Director of the UNU Freediving Foundation, a 501C3 tax exempt organization dedicated to raising funds for Freediving scientific research, risk awareness and Prevention.

Dr. Michael Ott is a Colorado native who received his undergraduate degree from Davidson College, followed by his medical degree from Wake Forest University.  He then studied Internal Medicine/Pulmonary Medicine/Critical Care Medicine at Mayo Clinic.  He is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University Of The Health Sciences, F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine.  Ott has been an active dive instructor since 1994 and a Diving Medical Officer with NOAA since 1998, serving on the USS Monitor and Aquarius saturation missions.  He continues to serve on the NOAA Diving Medical Review Board.  Ott has served as a faculty member and course director for numerous diving medical programs for NOAA and the military.  He is the medical director for the Ocean Corporation.  He serves as the Chief of Pulmonary/CCM/UHM at Eglin Air Force Base and is also a Flight Surgeon in the USAF working as the Chief of Aerospace Medicine for the 44^th Fighter Group (F35).  He has logged hours on more than 30 airframes with the Air Force.  

Peter Lindholm, MD, PhD is Professor in Residence, Gurnee Endowed Chair of Hyperbaric and Diving Medicine Research, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of California San Diego. He is a radiologist (licensed in Sweden), and associate professor in physiology and radiology from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. He has also served as director of thoracic radiology at the Karolinska University Hospital. His research interest is in the field of diving and hyperbaric medicine with focus on the pathophysiology of breath-hold diving. He has published studies on hypoxia and loss of consciousness as well as the pulmonary effects of lungsqueeze. He has described the physiology of how glossopharyngeal breathing extends the amount of gas in the lungs beyond total lung capacity, including the first case series suggesting cerebral arterial gas embolism from glossopharyngeal insufflation (lungpacking). He published the first study suggesting “tracheal squeeze” as an alternative to pulmonary edema in divers bleeding after deep dives. He has showed that exercise and fasting prior to diving increases the risk of loss of consciousness similar to hyperventilation. He has also developed a new method to use magnetic resonance imaging to diagnose pulmonary embolism. Current focus is on immersion pulmonary edema and lungsqueeze, as well as new methods to measure hyperbaric oxygen therapy. He also enjoys exercise and his saltwater aquarium.

Dr. Richard Moon earned BSc and MD degrees at McGill University. He trained in internal medicine and biomedical engineering at the University of Toronto, then in pulmonary and critical care medicine, followed by anesthesiology at Duke University. He joined the Duke University faculty in 1983. He is Professor of Anesthesiology, Professor of Medicine and Medical Director of the Duke Center for Hyperbaric Medicine & Environmental Physiology. His research has included physiology of immersion and predictors of arterial PCO2 during underwater exercise. He has been particularly interested in causes and prevention of immersion pulmonary edema, use of an experimental breathing gas (perfluoromethane) to decrease decompression requirements after heliox dives, mechanisms of death during triathlons, causes of perioperative opioid-induced respiratory depression, and improved monitoring techniques for monitoring patients to detect it. His awards include the Mentorship Award from the AMA-Women Physicians Congress Physician Mentor Recognition Program, Leonard Palumbo Jr, MD Faculty Achievement Award for compassionate patient care and excellence in the teaching and mentoring of young physicians, Duke awards for Excellence in Medical Student Education and two awards as Duke Anesthesiology Teacher of the Year.

Professor Simon Mitchell MB ChB, PhD, DipDHM, DipOccMed, FUHM, FANZCA
Simon is an anesthesiologist and diving physician and is the Head of the Department of Anaesthesiology at the University of Auckland. He has been a lifelong passionate diver and was a lead member of teams that were the first to locate, dive and identify 3 deep shipwrecks of high historical significance in Australia and New Zealand. At the time of one of these dives it was the deepest (600’) ever undertaken to a wreck. He is widely published, particularly in the area of diving medicine, with over 130 scientific papers or book chapters which include the chapter on hyperbaric and diving medicine in Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine. Simon was elected to Fellowship of the Explorers’ Club of New York in 2006. He received the Albert R Behnke Award (the highest American award for scientific contributions to the field) in 2010, the Eurotek Discovery Award in 2014, and was the DAN / Rolex Diver of the Year in 2015.  Editor of Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine Journal. Active technical diver participating in cutting edge cave and wreck diving expeditions including the first ultra-deep rebreather dive (230m (755’)) using hydrogen as a breathing gas in 2023.