City Tech Prof Re-examines Titanic Tragedy
BROOKLYN — On the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking, marine forensics expert Richard Woytowich will present a paper reinterpreting the statements made by survivors during the 1912 official inquiries into the disaster.
Woytowich, a professor of computer engineering technology at New York City College of Technology (City Tech), will take into account what engineers and other technologists now know about how the ill-fated passenger liner broke apart on April 15, 1912. He will be presenting his research on April 4 at the International Marine Forensics Symposium, to be held at the Gaylord National Hotel & Convention Center in National Harbor, Md.
Woytowich, a Staten Island resident, has been studying how the ship sank since 1998. In 2007, working with technical historian Roy Mengot, he developed a computer model showing that the breakup of the ship could have started in the bottom structure rather than at the uppermost decks, as was widely assumed. They wrote an article on this research, titled “The Breakup of Titanic: A Progress Report from the Marine Forensics Panel (SD-7),” which was published in the January 2010 issue of Marine Technology.