Tom Iliffe is a Professor of Marine Biology at Texas A&M University at Galveston where he teaches courses in Biospeleology, Scientific Diving and Tropical Marine Ecology. His research includes diving based investigations of the biodiversity, ecology and conservation marine (anchialine) caves. He has traveled world wide to conduct this research including numerous expeditions to the Atlantic, Caribbean, South Pacific and Mediterranean. He is a diving instructor with NAUI, a cave diving instructor with the National Speleological Society, and is rebreather, sidemount and mixed gas certified. He has been collaborating with Louis Kornicker at the National Museum of Natural History for more than 20 years and jointly published a dozen papers and monographs on new species of cave ostracodes.