Commander Joseph Dituri is a retired Naval Officer and Ph.D. who enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1985. He continuously served on various ships and shore stations where he was involved in hyperbaric system maintenance, saturation diving, rescue, and ship repair. In 1995 he was commissioned into the Special Operations Officer pipeline after earning his B.S. in Computer Science from University of South Carolina. After serving 3 diving tours in this community, he became the Engineering Duty Officer (diver). He then transferred to the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, California where he earned his master's degree in Astronautical Engineering.