Dr. Richard Styles has been named chief of the navigation branch at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory.

He will oversee the branch, which conducts research of navigation channels, locks, ports, and waterway systems.

Styles was an oceanographer in the Naval Oceanographic Office at Stennis Space Center in Gulfport and an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina.

A Knoxville native, he has a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Tennessee, a master’s in oceanography from the Florida Institute of Technology and a doctorate in oceanography from Rutgers University.