The Waitt Institute is a non-profit research organization based in La Jolla, California. The Institute serves as an exploration catalyst, enabling scientific pioneers to transform the ways in which discoveries are made. Founded in 2005 by Ted Waitt, the Waitt Institute seeks to advance human understanding of the past and secure promise of a better future through exploration and discovery. The Institute operates the CATALYST Program for deep ocean exploration and serves as leader on multiple maritime archaeology expeditions around the world. Through the Waitt Foundation, the Institute also supports exploratory field research endeavors in the natural and social sciences.

Our Mission

We serve as an exploration catalyst, putting immediate research opportunities into action.

We enable and facilitate the world’s leading scientific pioneers, accelerating their capacity to carry out groundbreaking research.

We implement creative approaches and inspired technologies in the field, transforming the ways in which discoveries are made through innovation.

We foster partnerships with world-renown scientific organizations, synthesizing the finest capabilities and expertise each institution has to offer.

We seek out revolutionary discoveries, progressing our understanding of the past to secure promise of a better future.

RECENT EXPEDITIONS

Expedition Titanic
In late Summer 2010, Waitt Institute completed an expedition in the North Atlantic with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and RMS Titantic LLC. The expedition utilized both of Waitt Institute’s AUVs to create the first ever comprehensive and multi-dimensional map of the Titanic wreck site. The information and images captured during the expedition will provide the world a dramatically improved view of this important site.

CATALYST 2 - The Search for Amelia
In the spring of 2009, the Waitt Institute used its two new autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to search the South Pacific for Amelia Earhart’s lost Electra 10E. Although the CATALYST 2 team did not find the plane, they successfully surveyed over 2200 square-miles of ocean floor in just under three months. The CATALYST 2 expedition was a partnership with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute.

CATALYST 1 - Florida’s Deep Reefs
This inaugural CATALYST expedition utilized the Waitt Institute’s new autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to create the first-ever high definition side-scan sonar maps of deep-water coral reefs off the coast of Florida. This charter mapping effort provided the data necessary to enable scientists and lawmakers to protect these reefs as part of a new Marine Protected Area. The CATALYST 1 expedition was a partnership with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute.

Ancient Shipwreck, Albania
In August of 2008, the Waitt Institute took part in a two-week exploratory expedition off the coast of southern Albania. As part of the expedition, the Waitt Institute’s team of divers explored and documented an ancient shipwreck from the 3rd century BCE. The information they accumulated will be used to help evaluate the shipwreck’s potential for a future archaeological excavation and further study of its features. The Waitt Institute’s expedition to Albania was a partnership with the RPM Nautical Foundation.

New Spain Fleet, Mexico
In early 2008, the Waitt Institute partnered with renowned archaeologist Pilar Luna from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). Through this partnership, the Waitt Institute expedition team assisted in the search for the flagship of the New Spain Fleet, which sank and was lost in 1631. The expedition team completed several sonar and magnetometer surveys along Chinchorro and Campeche Banks.

Rio Chagres Maritime Cultural Landscape, Panama
In early 2008, the Waitt Institute and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology partnered to conduct a site survey at the mouth of Panama’s Chagres River. The expedition team discovered and documented submerged cultural resources in various locations at the mouth of the river and in the waters below Fort San Lorenzo, including a shipwreck site. This cultural maritime site spans over 500 years of human history in the region.

The Submarine Explorer, Panama
The Waitt Institute and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology partnered in 2008 and returned to the site of the abandoned Submarine Explorer in Panama to complete full documentation of the beached craft. This Waitt expedition also included a survey of the marine life living in and around the submarine, as well as an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) survey of the waters in the  immediate vicinity of the Explorer.

Endymion Rock Shipwrecks, Turks & Caicos
In late 2007, the Waitt Institute partnered with the Turks and Caicos National Museum and Ships of Discovery to create a detailed record of the wreck of the HMS Endymion (1790), British Fifth-Rate warship. The expedition also resulted in the documentation and identification of another wreck nearby, the five-masted schooner General Pershing (1921).

RECENT COLLABORATIONS

NGS/Waitt Grants Program
This 5-year grant program is supported by the Waitt Institute and operated by the National Geographic Society. The program awards grants to individual researchers whose exploratory fieldwork holds promise for new breakthroughs in the natural and social sciences. Through the NGS/Waitt grants, the Waitt Institute funded more than 50 research projects in the program’s first year, taking place on all five continents.

The Genographic Project
Led by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Spencer Wells, the Genographic Project is a five-year National Geographic Society initiative to use sophisticated laboratory and computer analysis of DNA contributed by hundreds of thousands of people to map how the Earth was populated. With funding from the Waitt Foundation and support from the Waitt Institute, the project is establishing 10 centers around the world and will study more than 100,000 DNA samples from indigenous populations.

Ted Waitt, co-founder and former chairman and CEO of Gateway, Inc., helped revolutionize how people use technology to live, work and play through pioneering the direct marketing of personal computers. Labeled a maverick by national business publications, he has since gone on to form multiple enterprises: Avalon Capital Group, Inc., a wholly-owned, billion-dollar private investment company with diverse interests; the Waitt Foundation; and, the Waitt Institutes.

Through the Waitt Foundation, Ted has become one of America’s 50 most generous philanthropists, according to Business Week. Established in 1993, the Foundation initially focused on community development in “at-risk” communities.  After investing millions of dollars in various programs in multiple communities, Ted concluded that the Foundation’s work in domestic violence had the most measurable impact on those at risk today. The creation of the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention and the Waitt Institute in 2005 has allowed the Foundation to broaden its program interests. Ted serves as the president of the Waitt Institute and provides leadership for the Institute on a daily basis. Today, in addition to funding the two institutes, the Foundation funds a variety of environmental and scientific programs with an emerging focus on ocean exploration, conservation and rejuvenation.

Ted has served as the Chairman of the Founding Fathers campaign of the Family Violence Prevention Fund. He also serves on the Board of Trustees and the Council of Advisors of the National Geographic Society and as vice chairman of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, in La Jolla, Calif.

Born January 18, 1963 in Sioux City, Iowa, Ted is the son of a fourth generation cattleman. He attended the Universities of Colorado and Iowa from 1981 to 1984. After a nine-month stint working in the PC industry in Des Moines Iowa, he and Mike Hammond co-founded Gateway in 1985 on the Waitt family farm. With a $10,000 loan secured by Ted’s grandmother’s CD, they grew Gateway from “2 guys in a barn” to become a Fortune 500 company.

Over the years, Ted has earned a number of prestigious honors, among them: the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award from the U.S. Small Business Association, two Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards, Marketing Computers Marketer of the Year, and a Ten Outstanding Young Americans (TOYA) award from the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce. He was appointed by Congress to serve on the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce, and he received an Honorary Doctor of Science from the University of South Dakota.

Ted travels the world extensively, and most recently, he developed, produced and financed the film Amelia, starring Hilary Swank released in theaters in 2009.

Dominique Rissolo, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Dr. Dominique Rissolo is an archaeologist with field experience in the United States and Latin America. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in anthropology, with an emphasis in archaeology, from the University of California, Riverside, and received his B.A. in anthropology, with a minor in geological sciences, from San Diego State University.

Prior to coming to the Waitt Institute, Dominique’s primary interest has been in the rise of social complexity in the northern Maya lowlands and the development of ancient maritime trade networks along the Yucatan coast. His research on the Yucatan Peninsula has also focused on ancient Maya cave use as well as coastal and near-coastal settlement patterns and ecosystems. Throughout his fieldwork, Dominique has been active in local indigenous issues and involved the development of sustainable heritage resource management strategies.

Dominique has published extensively on these and other topics in various journals including the Journal of Ethnobiology and the Journal of Anthropological Research. Recently published book chapters can be found in Lifeways in the Lowlands, Quintana Roo Archaeology, and In the Maw of the Earth Monster. He has also presented numerous research papers at national and international conferences.

Prior to joining the Waitt Institute, Dominique taught anthropology and archaeology at San Diego State University where he is currently an adjunct professor. He has also taught courses and worked closely with students at the University of California, San Diego. Dominique is a Research Associate at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and is director of the Yalahau Archaeological Cave Survey, co-director of Proyecto Costa Escondida, and associate director of the Yalahau Regional Human Ecology Project. He is a Registered Professional Archaeologist and is an active member of the American Anthropological Association, the Society for American Archaeology, the Society for Historical Archaeology, the Archaeological Institute of America, and the Nautical Archaeology Society.

Michael Dessner
Director of Operations
Michael Dessner grew up in Cedar Falls and studied at the University of Iowa. He served 4 years in the US Army as an Air Defense Artilleryman and was honorably discharged in 1988. In 1992, Michael began working in the salmon fisheries and has lived and worked on the water ever since. He spent 12 years working and managing nearly every position related to Alaskan fisheries, from processor and deckhand in the Bering Sea to serving as buyer and station manager in the Alaskan deep water ports of Homer and Seward. Michael began working for the Waitt Institute in 2005. He is a sonar analyst and scuba diver and is currently honing his skills as an ROV and submersible pilot. An avid outdoorsman, his interests include art, literature, film and most anything having to do with water.


Joe Lepore
Dive Safety Officer
Joseph Lepore serves as the Waitt Institute’s Dive Safety Officer and oversees all deck operations during missions of discovery. He grew up in Ronkonkoma, New York where he joined the US Navy in 1986. He served his country with distinction and honor for twenty years before retiring as a Master Chief Petty Officer and Master Diver in 2006, after which he joined the Waitt Institute team. He completed the Navy’s schools for 2nd Class Diver and 1st Class Diver, as well as the schools for Salvage, Construction and Demolition Diving. During his service, he was awarded the Legion of Merit, 6 Meritorious Service Medals, 4 Navy Commendation Medals and 4 Navy Achievement Medals. In his spare time he enjoys boating, fishing and diving. He currently resides in North Carolina with his wife and two children.