Marco D'Emidio

Marco grew up in a little town on the east coast of central Italy. In 2007, he received his M. Sc. degree in Geology from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. After working as a geologist and geophysicist for a private Italian geophysical surveying company, Marco joined The University of Mississippi (at MMRI) in 2010 as a GIS Spatial Analyst and soon after became Chief Navigator and Mapper for both ROV’s and AUV’s research cruises. In 2021, Marco joined The University of Southern Mississippi Hydrographic Science Research Center as a Senior Research Scientist to continue to work with the AUV’s missions (overall 50+ expeditions), until August 2025 when he was reunited with the MMRI and Ole Miss family. Marco specializes in seafloor mapping (multibeam bathymetry, backscatter, 2/3D seismic interpretation/analysis) as well as data management, cruise planning, logistics and personnel oversight. The latest project focuses on developing and training machine learning tools to automate high resolution morpho-acoustic characterization of the seafloor, habitat mapping and prediction models.