Mr. Curcio received his Master’s of Engineering and Master’s of Science in Ocean Engineering and Ocean Systems Management from MIT in 1995.  His Master’s thesis addressed the concept of remote monitoring of the benthic marine environment using robotic camera systems. 

While working at the MIT Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Lab, Mr. Curcio participated in the design, development and deployment of early Odyssey class AUVs and led a team in the design and development of CETUS, the world’s first production level Autonomous Underwater Vehicle capable of hovering and station-keeping.  (Story published in Sea Technology, December 1998) 

Prior to pursuing his graduate studies at MIT, Mr. Curcio worked aboard several large sailing vessels including two of the historic J-Class yachts.  As engineer aboard Endeavour and Shamrock V (5), Mr. Curcio honed his problem solving skills and gained substantial practical experience designing and improving electro-mechanical systems subjected to the harshest of marine conditions.  He was recently awarded US Patent Number 6,414,629 for the development of a GPS based tracking system intended for locating persons lost at sea and looks forward to the day that this system is responsible for saving lives. See Outside Magazine, March 2007 issue.

Over the past few years, Mr. Curcio has been working with Professor John Leonard at MIT Department of Ocean Engineering.  Most recently, he has been working on the development of a low cost, reliable autonomous surface platform suitable for a wide variety of applications in the marine environment - SCOUT (Surface Craft for Oceanographic and Undersea Testing). Ongoing research includes software development in adaptive behavior with multiple vehicles in order to address the COLREGS (Collision prevention) requirements while operating autonomous and robotic vehicles. This work is being performed in conjunction with Michael Benjamin at MIT.