DAN Skillbridge Program - Research Asst.

DIVERS ALERT NETWORK - SkillBridge Program

SkillBridge is a Defense Department (DOD) program designed for transitioning service members. It provides employment training, internships, and apprenticeship opportunities at over 3,000 public and private organizations across the country. The program aims to help service members gain civilian experience while still on active duty, ultimately leading to a higher probability of employment after leaving the military.

Divers Alert Network (DAN) is a global organization headquartered in Durham, North Carolina. As the leader in civilian dive safety research, DAN employs and collaborates with dive science experts to conduct research regarding all aspects of dive safety.

Successful SkillBridge applicants will have the opportunity to learn, develop, and enhance professional skills that can lead directly to career advancements in the field of diving research and job placement within DAN. The location of this SkillBridge placement is Durham, NC.
They will participate in activities that originated in the DAN Internship Program. This program was created more than 20 years ago to give qualified candidates valuable experience in dive safety research. Today — over 100 interns later — the program continues to help people develop the knowledge and skills they need to pursue careers in diving-related and scientific fields.

The DAN SkillBridge participant will work alongside a mentor at DAN Headquarters in Durham, North Carolina for 2-6 months. Participants will work 40 hours per week in person.

The broad goal of training a SkillBridge participant at DAN will be to expand upon the applicant’s existing diving experience and knowledge and apply it to diving research in physiology, population health, and accident investigation. This will include understanding how to generally do good research, independent of diving, primarily focusing on human subject research (e.g. IRB protocols, data collection/storage, statistics). Then observe and participate in our ongoing research activities, with exposure to a range of projects, including the early idea stage, proposal writing, regulatory approval, data collection, data analysis and manuscript writing/presentations. The goal for our SkillBridge team member is to find a good, long-term fit in our Research Department (preferred), another department in DAN, or in another diving research-related field or organization. 

The training will be tailored to the needs of the applicant and the department at the time of the SkillBridge placement.

A full list of potential courses and skill development opportunities can be found here:

DOD SkillBridge - Divers Alert Network

SkillBridge participants will:
• Gain a deeper understanding of diving physiology, dive injury monitoring, and current diving research efforts worldwide
• Learn to prepare, plan, conduct, and communicate scientific experiments and take responsibility for their own research project
• Learn data acquisition and research techniques
• Engage with divers while collecting data in the field, and communicate DAN Research 
endeavors to the dive community at large

Prerequisites:
Service members with experience or expertise in diving, population health, or accident investigation are particularly encouraged to apply. Ideal candidates must be organized, detail-oriented, demonstrate excellent communication skills, demonstrate an established commitment to diving, and be able to clearly communicate how participation in this program will help them achieve their career goals. While diving is not required during the program, all activities are diving-focused, and as such, certified scuba divers with some experience would be most qualified. College education and experience in research is encouraged but not required for SkillBridge participation with Divers Alert Network.