David A. Scott
Executive Director

David founded the Maui Dive Institute in 2002 to further his research interests in the fields of scuba diving, photography, and computer software. He has spent the past 25 years programming computers and has held software engineering management and product management positions at IBM, Oracle, Rational Software, and Lockheed Martin (working for the US Environmental Protection Agency). He has also served in executive management for two high-tech startups. David's love for all creatures on this planet fuels his nearly 20 years of freelance photography work and several patents pending in the field of underwater photography. Of all locations, he prefers the warm waters of the 'Alalakeiki Channel off the coast of Maui in the Hawaiian Islands.

Joseph J. Mierwa
Director, Software Engineering

Joe joined the Maui Dive institute in May 2002 to combine his interests in scuba diving and software technologies. He is a software engineer with 19 years of experience in the development and support of distributed, real-time safety-critical & enterprise systems, in addition to 10 years of scuba diving and scuba diving instruction. His expertise is in system and component architecture, modeling, protocol design, operating systems, and communication standards development and has held development and architectural positions in those areas. He is currently both a PADI and TDI instructor. His love/obsession with diving has not diminished over the years and his two favourite diving locations are the North Carolina coast (pick any wreck) and the Cayman Islands.

Don Wence
Director, Engineering

Don joined the Maui Dive Institute in 2002 bringing over 20 years of technical and entreprenurial experience in the fields of Information Technology hardware and software. In addition to his work as an independent consultant, Don has held a distinuished career both as an electrical engineer and as a computer systems specialist with AT&T, Cisco Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Oracle. In his spare time, Don has been known to enjoy water sports and designing speech-recognition hardware (from spare parts lying around the office, of course). Don holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinios at Urbana-Champaign and has a patent pending for recent work he has done in the testing of storage subsystem performance.