Unema’s Underwater Robotics Engineering Career

Early in Levi Unema’s career as an electrical engineer, he was presented with an unusual opportunity. While working on assembly lines at an automotive parts supplier in 2015, he got a surprise call from his high-school science teacher that set him off on an entirely new path: piloting underwater robots to explore the ocean’s deepest abysses.

That call came from Harlan Kredit, a nationally renowned science teacher and board member of a Rhode Island-based nonprofit called the Global Foundation for…