Dr. Edith Widder

Edie Widder was on a pretty traditional career path in research science – with a BS in biology from Tufts University and an MS in Biochemistry and PhD in Neurobiology from the University of California, Santa Barbara -but then a submersible dive in 1984 changed everything. She was stunned by all the bioluminescence she saw and has been studying the phenomenon ever since. She has racked up hundreds of dives in deep diving submersibles and has qualified to pilot the deep diving suit WASP as well as the single-person untethered submersibles DEEP ROVER and DEEP WORKER. Edie’s career in deep-sea exploration has brought her wide acclaim. In 2012 she captured the first video of the giant squid Architeuthis filmed in the deep sea using a stealth camera of her own design. In 2019 she repeated the feat, filming a giant squid in the Gulf of Mexico. Her deep-sea research has been featured in BBC, PBS, Discovery Channel, and National Geographic television productions. She is the CEO and Senior Scientist at the Ocean Research & Conservation Association (www.TeamORCA.org ), a not-for-profit that she helped found in 2005 to focus on results-oriented, science-based solutions to ocean conservation challenges. Based on those efforts she was awarded a MacArthur genius grant in 2008.