Speaker

William Kohnen is president and Chief Executive Officer of HYDROSPACE Group Inc., a California company expert in manned submersibles and a wide spectrum of pressure vessels for human occupancy. Mr. Kohnen has 30 years of engineering experience combining expertise in electrical and mechanical engineering serving the aerospace, medical and subsea industries with a primary mission to promote new technologies for the management of world oceans and industrial infrastructure. Mr. Kohnen is an electromagnetic engineer by trade and has designed high efficiency DC motors for space and subsea for 30 years. He is chairman of the Marine Technology Society (MTS) committee on Manned Underwater Vehicles for the past 19 years and was made MTS Fellow in 2014. He has published many papers and articles on the state of the MUV industry. Mr. Kohnen is a member of the ASME PVHO Safety Standards Committee, a member of the ABS Special Committee on Rules for Underwater Vehicles, Industry representative for DNVGL Underwater Technology Rules review, member of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society (UHMS), the Aerospace Medical Society and was member of the Deep Submersible Pilot association. Mr. Kohnen is Co-Founder of Seamagine Hydrospace Corp which designs and produces manned submersibles since 1995, with fifteen vehicles distributed around the globe. Kohnen was born in Germany. He completed a bachelor and master’s Degree in electrical engineering at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada.