The people driving SpeleoDB forward
Our organization brings together passionate individuals from diverse backgrounds, united by a shared vision to revolutionize cave survey and exploration data management.
Board of Directors
Our Board provides strategic guidance and ensures the organization stays true
to its mission of advancing cave exploration and data management.
Alberto Nava
President | Explorer | GUE Technical Instructor
Alberto Nava is a Venezuelan-American engineer, diver, and GUE instructor based in California, with over 25 years of diving experience and more than 500 underwater cave dives to his name. He is part of the team that discovered Hoyo Negro - a submerged cave in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula containing Ice Age megafauna and the 13,000-year-old remains of a young girl now known as Naia. This landmark find has become a cornerstone in the study of the first Americans.
From 2011 to 2015, Nava received a National Geographic Explorer’s Grant to document and photograph Hoyo Negro. His imagery now supports advanced 3D reconstruction efforts at UC San Diego’s Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative, bringing this inaccessible site to researchers and the public worldwide.
With degrees in computer science from Simón Bolívar University and more than two decades in engineering, Nava bridges technology and exploration. He continues to publish on underwater mapping, cave exploration, and heritage preservation, using his experience to advocate for science, education, and cultural stewardship.
Jonathan Dekhtiar, PhD.
Vice-President & Treasurer | Explorer | SpeleoDB Founder
Jonathan Dekhtiar is a deep learning researcher, engineer, and cave explorer. He earned his PhD in Unsupervised Deep Learning for anomaly detection and has been with NVIDIA since 2018, contributing to core GPU-accelerated Python libraries, compilers, and packaging infrastructure. Jonathan played a key role in designing Python software release systems at NVIDIA and is a founding force behind the open-source WheelNext initiative - dedicated to solving modern packaging challenges for the Python and AI communities.
A passionate diver under the GUE banner since 2021 and an active cave diver since 2022, Jonathan now explores remote sections of the Sac Actun cave system in Mexico. His deep respect for exploration and open collaboration inspired him to launch SpeleoDB, an open-source project created by and for the cave diving community. Through SpeleoDB, he aims to empower explorers, researchers, and conservationists with better tools to document, preserve, and share the world’s underwater heritage.
Gavin Chilcott, PhD.
Secretary | GUE Technical & Cave Diver
Gavin Chilcott holds a PhD in microbiology from the University of Washington and a bachelors degree in molecular biology from the University of California at Berkeley. He is the founder and former Chief Operating Officer of the BMC Racing Team (later CCC Team, later Intermarché-Wanty Cycling Team), which competed at the premier international level of professional cycling. Notable team results include an overall victory at the Tour de France, and victories in many other important races including Paris-Roubaix, multiple World Championships and the Olympics. In addition to his role on the USAH Institute's board of directors, Gavin is currently the president and board chair of the Cordell Marine Sanctuary Foundation and board secretary of the Bay Area Underwater Explorers. Gavin's cave and CCR diving training were completed through the Global Underwater Explorers training system.
Giana Chilcott
PR Manager | Outreach Coordinator | GUE Diver
Giana Chilcott graduated magna cum laude from Skidmore College, where she attended as an athletic scholar in equestrian sports. Following college she became a two-sport professional athlete, competing in equestrian show jumping and bicycle road racing. As an equestrian she garnered top results primarily in the United States and New Zealand. Her cycling career took her around the world with numerous years spent racing in Europe. She is a former world champion and multiple-time National Champion of the United States in the individual time trial. As a recent retiree from sport, Giana now works in health care administration and compliance management. She operates a side business focusing on digital strategy and brand management in the retail and hospitality industries. Her diving training has been within the Global Underwater Explorers system.
Technical Steering Committee
The technical minds behind SpeleoDB's architecture, ensuring our platform remains cutting-edge, secure, and community-driven.
Flip Vernooij
Engineer | Cave Diver
Eight years ago, Flip left the Netherlands for Mexico — and the depths of its world-famous underwater caves have been his second home ever since. While surveying the vast Ox-Bel-Ha system with MCEP, he saw firsthand how much room there was to improve the software used to process complex cave survey data.
Drawing on his strong background in software engineering and data analytics, Flip began developing a new platform designed to push the limits of what’s possible — not only in mapping intricate cave systems, but also in capturing, organizing, and analyzing the diverse scientific and environmental data that comes with them. His goal: to give explorers, scientists, and conservationists sharper tools to understand and protect these hidden worlds.
Patrick Picard
IT Consultant | Explorer | Surveyor
Infrastructure architect focused on cloud computing, data solutions, and DevOps. Active member in open-source projects. Passionate about cave survey, user experience, and data management.
Sebastien Kister
Explorer - Engineer - Creator of Ariane & MNemo
Sebastien Kister, is born in France in the seventeens, he studied mathematics and software engineering before dedicating himself fully to diving when he moved to Dahab, Egypt, in 2005. Exploring as a technical diver the blue hole and other deep reefs of the area, he discovered cave diving. He moved to Playa del Carmen beginning 2010 where he became a cave diving instructor.
He got the chance to be included in the QDT exploration team for the exploration of Cenote Doggi, Caterpillar, Sand Crack and other projects in the Tulum area. It’s in this period that he saw that the cave exploration community could need a user-friendly mapping software and this led to the development of the Ariane cave mapping software. He also tried to bring people to share their exploration data, although that idea was not very common in those days, on a web platform.
In 2014 he began thinking about a solution to make the underwater cave survey process, based on mechanical compass, line measuring and note taking, easier more precise and less error prone. A year later, the first prototype of what will become the Mnemo was tested. Soon the device was produced in small series and is now used worldwide to facilitate the mapping of caves. The second version of the device was released in 2022 and is becoming a de facto standard tool for cave mapping. He is now working on what will become a handheld LIDAR, aimed at measuring, and recording 3D volumetric data of caves.
Zachary Heylmun
Engineer | Cave Diver
Zach Heylmun is an embedded systems engineer and cave diver based in Florida.
He is an active member of Karst Underwater Research, supporting cave exploration and conservation efforts throughout Florida.
He is interested in using technology to improve the safety and efficiency of technical diving operations, particularly for surveying and mapping challenging underwater cave environments.
Explorer Advisory Board
Experienced cave explorers and surveyors who provide real-world insights to ensure our platform meets the community's needs.
Emőke Wagner
Explorer | Surveyor | GUE Cave Instructor
Emőke Wagner is a Hungarian cave explorer and GUE Cave instructor based in Mexico, with over 1,200 cave dives and 55 km of new passage mapped. She leads and supports international projects while promoting safety, conservation, and mentorship in cave diving.
Matthew Vinzant
Explorer | Survey | Director of KUR
Matt Vinzant is a Florida-based cave diver and Director of Karst Underwater Research (KUR). Since 2000, he has been actively involved in cave exploration across the United States and southern Mexico. An experienced dry caver, sump diver, and cave diver, Matt is passionate about discovering and surveying caves of all kinds—from shallow no-mount systems and sumps to deep, long-range dual-CCR dives.
Marcelin Nebenhaus
Explorer | Cartographer | GUE Instructor
Originally from France, Marcelin developed a passion for the underwater world early in life and began diving in 1995. After exploring dive sites around the globe, his focus shifted toward technical and cave diving in 2010. In 2015, he permanently relocated to Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula to pursue this passion more intensively.
Marcelin began cave diving as often as possible and continued advancing his training, quickly becoming an accomplished cave diver. In 2017, he started surveying and exploring caves, beginning with a resurvey project of the Taj Maha cave system, which resulted in the release of a “stick map” later that year. Since then, he has taken part in numerous exploration initiatives alongside other divers and has contributed to various scientific projects.
Today, Marcelin remains actively involved in multiple exploration efforts and a community cartography project. As a GUE instructor, he shares his passion for diving and is dedicated to mentoring the next generation of divers and explorers.
Skanda Coffield-Feith
Cave Explorer | Survey Specialist | Technical & Rebreather Instructor
Since relocating from Melbourne, Australia to Tulum, Mexico in 2016, Skanda has established himself as one of the Yucatan Peninsula's most active cave explorers and survey specialists. What began as a passion for cave diving and instruction has evolved into an obsession with exploration. He combines these passions in his cave survey program that combines rigorous survey methodology with his experiences of discovery and documentation in new underwater cave systems, teaching and mentoring the next generation of cave explorers.. Skanda's exploration work focuses on both extending known cave systems and discovering entirely new underwater cave networks throughout the Riviera Maya. Some notable explorations have been Yaakun / the Void, Cenote Santa Maria, Cenote Bruce Lee and a connection between cenotes Cristal and Ramon. Outside of Mexico, he was involved in an expedition to continue to explore Pannikin Plains in Australia in 2023.