Derya Akkaynak

Derya Akkaynak is a mechanical engineer and oceanographer whose research focuses on problems of biological and computational vision underwater. In addition to using off-the-shelf RGB cameras for scientific imaging underwater, she also uses hyperspectral sensors to investigate how the world appears to non-human animals. Derya has professional, technical, and scientific diving certifications and has conducted underwater fieldwork in the Bering Sea, Red Sea, Antarctica, Caribbean, Northern and Southern Pacific and Atlantic, and her native Aegean. Akkaynak is an honoree for the 2019 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in physics and engineering for her post-doctoral research resolving a fundamental problem in underwater computer vision—the reconstruction of lost colors and contrast—which led to the development of the “Sea-thru” algorithm. She currently works at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Fort Pierce, Florida. Derya earned her Ph.D. from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.