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Val Schmidt
Center for Coastal & Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center
Jere A. Chase Ocean Engineering Lab
24 Colovos Road
Durham, New Hampshire 03824
Val Schmidt leads the Center’s marine robotics program, where he and a team of engineers and graduate students solve problems to “make autonomy practical.” Val holds a bachelor’s degree in Physics with Honors, from the University of the South, (Sewanee, TN, 1994), and a Master of Science in Ocean Engineering, with an emphasis in Ocean Mapping, from the University of New Hampshire’ s Category A Hydrographic program, (Durham, NH, 2008). From 1994-2000, Val served in the U.S. Navy as an Officer in the U.S. submarine fleet, as Radiological Controls Officer and later Sonar Officer aboard the USS Hawkbill. Since 2008, he and his team at CCOM have deployed un-crewed vehicles, from shore and from ships at sea, for marine science and seafloor mapping missions around the world, including recent missions with autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) from NOAA Ship Fairweather (2018), Exploration Vessel Nautilus (2017, 2018, 2021, 2022 x3), NOAA Ship Shearwater (2017), and NOAA Ship Thomas Jefferson (2019 and 2022). Val has also deployed ASVs from shore in NOAA Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary (2019 and 2021), and countless other day deployments from our own vessel and from shore off the New Hampshire coast.