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- 11849
Simon works as an anaesthesiologist at Auckland City Hospital, a diving physician at North Shore Hospital (Auckland), and is Professor of Anaesthesiology at the University of Auckland. He is widely published with two books and over 170 scientific journal papers or book chapters. He co-authored the 5th edition of 'Diving and Subaquatic Medicine' and the Hyperbaric and Diving Medicine chapters in the last four editions of Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine. He has twice been Vice President of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Society (USA) and in 2010 received the society’s Behnke Award for scientific contributions to diving medicine. 
He has been Editor-in-Chief of Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine Journal since 2019.
Simon has a long career in sport, scientific, commercial, and military diving. He has participated in cutting edge wreck and cave diving expeditions spanning many years. In 2002 he performed the deepest dive to a shipwreck at that time. In February 2023 he was a member of the Wet Mules expedition to the Pearse Resurgence cave in New Zealand where a 230 m dive was conducted using hydrogen as a breathing gas on a deep dive for the first time in over 30 years. He was conferred Fellowship of the Explorers’ Club of New York in 2006, and was the Rolex Diver of the Year in 2015.
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- Super User
- Category: Information
- 5476
I was introduced to baromedical research by the legendary Professor Alf Brubakk as a biophysics student in the mid-1980s. Since then, I did a
PhD in DNA repair at the Norwegian Institute of Technology and a post doc in molecular biology at the École supérieure de biotechnologie Strasbourg, followed by a ten-year intermezzo in medical and forensic genetics in Trondheim and Copenhagen before returning to baromedicine in 2009.
Today I work as a senior scientist at the Department of Circulation and Medical Imaging at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. I’m generally curious about the fundamental biological mechanisms that enable humans to live and work in high-pressure and underwater environments, and what happens when divers experience environmental stress levels that exceed their limits for physiological adjustment. Baromedical research in Trondheim is mostly centered around professional diving through partnerships between universities, industry and regulatory agencies, but my interest in everything ending in -omics has also led to other collaborations on diving-related topics.
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- 5515
Neal Pollock was born in Edmonton, Canada. He developed an early passion for aquatics and outdoor adventure, moving from competitive
swimming to bicycle touring, skiing, whitewater kayaking and scuba diving by high school. He completed a Bachelor's Degree in Zoology, the first three years at the University of Alberta (Edmonton) and the final year at the University of British Columbia (UBC, Vancouver). He stayed in Vancouver after graduating, working in the diving field, and completing a Master's Degree while serving as university diving officer at UBC. He was able to dive in many locations around the world during this time, including Antarctica. He then moved to Florida to work on a diving research study directed by Dr Richard Vann of Duke University and complete a doctorate in exercise physiology/environmental physiology at Florida State University (FSU). While at FSU he taught anatomy and physiology and exercise physiology to undergraduates and gross anatomy to first-year medical students. He also continued seasonal research diving in the Antarctic. Upon graduation, he taught at East Carolina University (ECU) and then Georgia Southern University while commuting to Duke University to work on environmental physiology studies. He moved to Duke on a full-time basis in 2000, progressively increasing his involvement with Divers Alert Network (DAN) Research. He was recruited to Université Laval in 2016 for a new research chair in hyperbaric and diving medicine, working in the hyperbaric unit at Hôtel-Dieu de Lévis. His research interests focus on human health and safety in extreme environments. He has served as a reviewer for > 40 peer-reviewed journals and has been on the editorial board of Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine since 2008. He still cycles, skis, kayaks, and dives and is quick to accept invitations to interesting places.
- Super User
- Category: Information
- 5592
Rob van Hulst was born (1957) and raised in the Netherlands, he is married and has one son. He has been a scuba diver since 1977, is a CMAS three-star instructor and has logged more
than 1,000 dives.
Rob graduated MD from the University of Groningen in 1984 and joined the Royal Netherlands Navy in 1985. After two years sailing on Navy ships and being a GP on board the RNLN diving vessels, he started a two-year training programme as a diving and submarine medical officer, which includes practical training in military diving and courses in Toronto (DDRC, Canada) and Panama City, USA. Having finished the military staff course in 1992 and acting as Commanding Officer, UN Mission Field Hospital in Cambodia (1993), he became the Director of Diving and Submarine Medicine, RNLN. Since that time, he has been a member of the DMAC and EDTC. In 2003, he completed his PhD in neuro-anesthesiology, studying cerebral air embolism in an animal model.
Since 2007, he has been the Director of the Maritime Medical Expertise Center/Diving Medical Center and was promoted to Captain (Navy). He has been responsible for the training and education in the Netherlands of more than 100 occupational physicians for performing diving medicals and about 20 military DMO/SMOs.
After his retirement from the Navy in October 2013, he will continue his work at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam (Boerema Chamber) as Head of Research, Hyperbaric and Diving Medicine. Meanwhile, he will continue to act as a consultant for the RNLN and some commercial diving companies. Other hobbies, as well as scuba diving, include wine, running, photography (not underwater) and martial arts.
- Super User
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- 6580
Erika Schagatay, born in Lappland, Sweden, was an active scuba diver in the Ice Sea, North of Norway, in the 1980s, but is now more devoted to advanced freediving, inspired to go 
deeper from observing the world competition elite. She studied biology at Lund University and after Master’s study in marine biology at Göteborg University, completed her doctoral dissertation on human breath-hold diving back in Lund in 1996. Since 2000, she has worked at Mid Sweden University where she heads the Environmental Physiology Group, studying human performance in extreme environments. The special focus is on human breath-hold diving, but her research also involves high altitude climbing, thermal physiology and some pathological conditions causing limited oxygen supply. Field studies involving, for example, Japanese Ama divers, competition freedivers and high altitude populations have lead to novel findings, further explored and explained through laboratory experiments, and results have been presented in about 50 original scientific publications. Lately she has led several research expeditions to SE Asia to study the diving population Sama Bajau.
Erika is also active as a certified trainer for recreational freedivers and has worked as a board member in the Swedish Diving Federation with developing safety regulations for freediving and establishing competitive freediving as a sport in Sweden under the official sports federation, which was accomplished during 2012. She has been internationally consulted concerning freediving safety by both AIDA and CMAS, and has been involved in the education of baromedical specialists in freediving physiology in several European countries.