Kevin Williams, the executive director of UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory, told CNN Tuesday “the Laboratory was not involved in the design, engineering or testing of the TITAN submersible used in the RMS TITANIC expedition.”ĬNN’s Rob Frehse, Jason Kravarik and Paul Murphy contributed to this post.Ī screengrab from a Canadian Armed Forces Operations video released on June 21, 2023, showing search efforts for the OceanGate Titan submersible. The filing said OceanGate’s vessel was the result of over eight years of work, including “detailed engineering and development work under a company issued $5 million contract to the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory.”

The filing laid out the Titan’s testing details and its specifications, including that it had undergone more than 50 test dives and detailing its 5-inch-thick carbon fiber and titanium hull. CNN also asked OceanGate what the company was testing in the school’s testing tanks.Ĭourt filing: CNN previously reported that in a 2021 court filing, OceanGate’s legal representative touted the specs and a hull monitoring system that he called 'an unparalleled safety feature” built into the Titan. The legal representative told the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, which oversees matters related to the Titanic, of the company’s expedition plans at the time. The tanks were used on a contract basis and no university researchers were involved in those tests and “UW personnel did not provide any verification or validation of any OceanGate equipment as a result of those tests,” Balta added.ĬNN reached out to OceanGate for comment about why the company and the University of Washington ended their research agreement. OceanGate used testing tanks at the UW School of Oceanography for nine tests between 20, Balta said.

As stated earlier, the Laboratory was not involved in the design, engineering or testing of the TITAN submersible used in the RMS TITANIC expedition,” Balta added.

“That collaboration resulted in a steel-hulled vessel, named the Cyclops 1, that can travel to 500 meters depth, which is far shallower than the depths that OceanGate’s TITAN submersible traveled to. “To clarify and expand upon yesterday’s statement, the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory initially signed a $5 million research collaborative agreement with OceanGate, but only $650,000 worth of work was completed before the two organizations parted ways,” University of Washington spokesperson Victor Balta said in a statement to CNN.

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