Dr. Hanlon’s career path seems to have been determined by fate; as a teenager scuba diving in Panama, he came across an octopus on a coral reef and he has been fascinated with them ever since.
Hanlon received his undergraduate degree from Florida State University and his MS and PhD degrees from the University of Miami, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. He spent more than a decade at the Marine Biomedical Institute at the University of Texas Medical Branch before moving to the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA in 1995. Hanlon was director of the Marine Resources Center at MBL for eight years. Currently, he is a Senior Scientist and his research lab continues to investigate the wonders of cephalopod camouflage.