John C. Behrendt

JOHN C. BEHRENDT made his first trip to Antarctica in 1956 as a graduate student "assistant seismologist" in the International Geophysical Year (IGY), where he wintered over at Ellsworth Station on the Filchner Ice Shelf. He participated in the Filchner Ice Shelf Traverse in 1957-58. Behrendt has continued his work in Antarctica on 12 additional trips, most recently in 2003, making him one of 2-3 people who have worked in the U.S. Program in Antarctica in six successive decades. In 1961-62 he led the Antarctic Peninsula Traverse; the Behrendt Mountains in Ellsworth Land were named as a result of this expedition. He has also participated in six research cruises in the Weddell and Ross Seas.

As a result of his Antarctic research, Behrendt was active as a member of the U.S. Delegation to 22 Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings from 1977-1995. In this role, he was a scientific advisor on negotiation of the Environmental Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty. In 1992 he received the Department of Interior Meritorious Service Award for outstanding research in Atlantic Margin Geophysics; Charleston Earthquake Studies; Great Lakes seismic reflection investigations; and Antarctic scientific research. He was awarded the first Felice Ippolito Gold Medal for his Antarctic research by the Italian Antarctic Research Program and the Academia Nazionale dei Linceia in 1999. In 2003 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for "distinguished contributions to the understanding of crustal controls on the Antarctic Ice Sheet and for efforts to protect and manage Antarctica for the scientific benefit of all nations." He is also a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and the Explorers Club, and a member of the American Geophysical Union, Society of Exploration Geophysicists, the Antarctican Society, and the New Zealand Antarctic Society.

Behrendt is a Fellow Emeritus at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder where he is working on geophysical evidence for subglacial and submarine late Cenozoic volcanism. He is also a scientist emeritus at the U.S. Geological Survey where he worked for 31 years. In addition to Antarctica, Behrendt carried out geophysical investigations in West Africa, the Atlantic continental margin of the U.S. and the Rocky Mountains.

Behrendt's first book: "Innocents on The Ice; A Memoir of Antarctic Exploration, 1957" won the Colorado Book Award for non-fiction in 1999. His second book, "The Ninth Circle; A Memoir of Life and Death in Antarctica, 1960-1962" was published in 2005.

David J. Carlson

DAVID J. CARLSON directs the International Programme Office, established by the International Council for Science and the World Meteorological Organization, for the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2009. IPY 2007-2009 represents one of the most ambitious coordinated international scientific programmes ever attempted. Dr. Carlson has devoted more than 15 years to guiding, managing and supporting large international science programmes, starting from the very large Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment in 1992 and 1993 and continuing through a decade of complex programmes focused on many aspects of weather, atmospheric chemistry, and climate. Dr. Carlson holds a Ph.D. in Oceanography and conducted personal research programmes in upper ocean physics and chemistry, oceanic microbiology, and marine chemical ecology. The IPY International Programme Office operates from within the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK. Please find additional information at: www.ipy.org.

Ronald E. Doel

RONALD E. DOEL is Associate Professor of History of Science in the Program in History of Science (Department of History), with a joint appointment in the Department of Geosciences, at Oregon State University. A historian of the environmental sciences who has written extensively about international cooperation in science, including the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957-58, Doel chairs the History Committee of the American Geophysical Union. He has served as lead interviewer for several major oral history projects to document the history of the earth and environmental sciences, among them the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory Oral History Project conducted through Columbia University’s Oral History Research Office. He is currently Project Leader of “Colony, Empire, Environment: A Comparative International History of Twentieth Century Arctic Science,” a 7-nation, 9-member project sponsored by the European Science Foundation. More information appears at www.esf.org/activities/eurocores/programmes/boreas/projects/list-of-projects.html.

Chris Elfring

CHRIS ELFRING is Director of Polar Research Board (PRB) and also the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (BASC) at the National Academies. Since she jointed the PRB in 1996 and BASC in 2002, she has been responsible for all aspects of strategic planning, project development and oversight, financial management, and personnel for both units. Ms. Elfring has been involved in studies such as A Vision for International Polar Year, Assessment of US Polar Icebreaker Needs, Environmental Stewardship for the Exploration of Subglacial Lake Environments, and Toward an Integrated Arctic Observing Network. She has played a key, primarily "behind-the-scenes" role in planning International Polar Year 2007-2008. Before coming to the National Academies, Ms. Elfring was a policy analyst at Congress's Office of Technology Assessment, where she focused on agriculture, water use, and natural resource management. She first came to Washington, DC in 1979 as a AAAS Congressional Fellow from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has a long-standing interest in the policy dimensions of science and communicating science to non-scientists.

Kristine C. Harper

KRISTINE C. HARPER is Assistant Professor of History at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. During the 2007-2008 academic year, she holds a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship and is a Fellow at the Tanner Humanities Center, University of Utah, while she writes her book Weather by Design: State Control of the Atmosphere in Twentieth Century America. Her book Weather by the Numbers: The Genesis of Modern Meteorology will be published this year by the MIT Press. Before earning her Ph.D. in History of Science from Oregon State University in 2003, Harper spent over twenty years as an active duty Navy meteorologist and oceanographer, providing operational scientific support to aviation, surface, and subsurface forces, including two years in Iceland where she commanded the base weather office. For the past five years, Harper has chaired the History Committee of the American Meteorological Society, and she continues to serve as a member of the American Geophysical Union History Committee.

Donal T. Manahan

DONAL T. MANAHAN is a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. He has been the Chief Scientist for over 15 scientific expeditions to Antarctica since 1983. His research interests bridge the fields of biological adaptation, animal physiology, developmental biology, and molecular biology -- all studied in an environmental context. He has taught at the university level for over 25 years. His courses include introductory biological sciences; advanced physiology; oceanography; humans and their environments; history of science; and environmental science. While on the faculty at USC, he has held various administrative positions, including: Director of Environmental Biology; Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences; and Dean of Research of the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Nationally, he has served as Chair of the US National Academies' Polar Research Board; Chair of the Committee of Scientific Users for the US Antarctic Program's major research laboratories (Crary Laboratory) located at McMurdo Station; and on NSF's Decadal Group-Planning Committee for Ocean Sciences. He is currently serving on the Advisory Committee to the Director of NSF's Office of Polar Programs. Dr. Manahan directs an NSF-funded, international training program to study biological adaptations of Antarctic organisms. This advanced educational program is aimed at introducing new Ph.D. students and postdoctoral researchers to polar research. The content of this on-site educational program in Antarctica spans (i) the history of early scientific polar research; (ii) modern themes of major interest in environmental science (e.g., global warming and the ozone hole); and (iii) biological adaptations to environmental change. The individuals who have participated in these training programs in Antarctica were from ~120 different research institutions, representing over 20 different countries. In 2000, "Manahan Peak" in Antarctica was named in honor of Manahan's contributions to research and education. In 2001, he was appointed a lifetime "National Associate" of the US National Academies in recognition of his service to the Nation in matters of science.

Mark S. McCaffrey

MARK S. McCAFFREY is a member of the IPY Education, Outreach and Communication subcommittee and several related working groups. He has organized several IPY-related workshops including the 2005 Poles Together event in Boulder and the 2006 Integrated Collaborative Education (ICE) online workshop. He testified to Congress in the fall of 2006 about IPY as a timely and urgent education and communications opportunity to showcase the polar regions and the changes occurring there which have global significance. He hosted a video conference between Germany, Alaska, Colorado and two research vessels in both polar regions during the September 2007 IPY Day, and is currently developing IPY Data Stories in association with the IPY Data Information System (IPYDIS) which help capture and convey the "who, what, where, when, how, and why" of data collection and analysis. Mark is an Associate Scientist III at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a science communication and education specialist focusing on climate, water and solar science. He has co-convened several IPY related sessions at AGU, and has authored "The 125 Year Legacy of the International Polar Year": http://www.ostina.org/content/view/1130/496/.

Mark has been the co-founder of the Boulder Creek Watershed Initiative, and worked with the NOAA Paleoclimatology Program as an education and outreach specialist where he co-developed the Climate TimeLine information tool and was the lead author of the Abrupt Climate Change Paleo Perspective. He led the development of the Climate Change Collection, a digital library collection of reviewed and annotated resources about natural climate variability and human-induced climate change. See http://cires.colorado.edu/education/k12/people/mccaffrey/ for more details.

Diane M. McKnight

DIANE M. MCKNIGHT is a professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering and a fellow of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is the co-director Hydrologic Sciences Graduate program at CU. From 1979 to1996, she was a research hydrologist with the Water Resources Division of the U. S. Geological Survey. Her areas of research are in limnology and water quality of water supplies, focusing on the ecology of algae in lakes and streams and the biogeochemistry of natural organic material and trace metals. Her field research is conducted in alpine and polar environments. Since 1987, she has conducted biogeochemical and hydrologic studies in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, and is a co-investigator in the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research project. In collaboration with the USGS, her research group operates a network of 17 stream gauges, including gauges on the Onyx River, the longest river in Antarctica. She has conducted research on the biogeochemistry of dissolved organic material in streams and lakes in the North Slope of Alaska. She served as President of the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography (1996-1998), the acting-President of the Biogeosciences Section of the American Geophysical Union (2000-2002) and is the Editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences. She served on the steering committee for a NSF workshop on Emerging Issues in Limnology in 2002-2003. She has served on several committees for the National Research Council, including the Water, Science and Technology Board (2000-2003) and the Polar Research Board, the Committee to Review the Climate Change Science Plan (2003-2004), and the Committee on Salmon and Water Resources in the Columbia Basin (2003-2004). She also served on Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education for NSF (2004-2007).

Ellen Mosley-Thompson

ELLEN MOSLEY-THOMPSON is a University Distinguished Scholar in the Department of Geography and a Research Scientist in the Byrd Polar Research Center. She uses the chemical and physical properties preserved in ice cores collected from the polar ice sheets to the high mountains in the tropics to reconstruct the Earth's complex climate history. These records have been critical for confirming that the variability of the climate system in the second half of the 20th century has now moved outside the range of natural variability. The chemical records clearly document the impact of human activities upon the chemistry of the atmosphere. Ellen has lead eight field programs to Antarctica and six to Greenland to retrieve ice cores and at South Pole Station, Antarctica she established the continent's longest running and most spatially extensive network measuring the annual snowfall. Please see http://bprc.osu.edu/Icecore/GroupP.html#ellenmosleythompson or http://geog-www.sbs.ohio-state.edu/faculty/emt/ for more details.

Donald Perovich

DONALD PEROVICH is a Research Geophysicist at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. His primary research interest is understanding the role of sea ice in the global climate system, with an emphasis on the heat budget of sea ice and the ice albedo feedback. He has participated in numerous field experiments including serving as the Chief Scientist of SHEBA, a large international program studying the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean. The centerpiece of this program was a year-long ice drift experiment. He also conducted sea ice studies during the 2005 Healy Oden Trans Arctic Expedition expedition to the North Pole. This work has demonstrated the role of solar heating in the observed decline of the Arctic sea ice cover. He has participated in committee activities and workshops focused on understanding the Arctic as a system. Perovich received a Ph.D. degree in Geophysics from the University of Washington in 1983.

Stephanie Pfirman

STEPHANIE PFIRMAN is the Alena Wels Hirschorn '58 and Martin Hirschorn Professor and chair of the Barnard College, Columbia University, Department of Environmental Science. Throughout her career, Pfirman has been engaged in Arctic environmental research, undergraduate education, environmental policy strategies and public outreach. Current interests include understanding changes in Arctic sea ice, and development of women scientists and interdisciplinary scholars. A member of the National Academy of Science's Polar Research Board, Pfirman is also president-elect of the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors, and co-PI of the National Science Foundation-sponsored Advancing Women in the Sciences initiative of the Columbia Earth Institute. Prior to joining Barnard, Pfirman was senior scientist at Environmental Defense where she worked with the American Museum of Natural History to develop the award-winning exhibition "Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast." She was also research scientist at the University of Kiel and GEOMAR, Germany; staff scientist for the US House of Representatives Committee on Science; and oceanographer with the US Geological Survey in Woods Hole. Pfirman received a Ph.D. in Marine Geology and Geophysics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography and Oceanographic Engineering, and a BA in Geology from Colgate University.

Photo credit © Bruce Gilbert

Phillip M. Smith

Lonnie G. Thompson

LONNIE G. THOMPSON is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences and a Research Scientist in the Byrd Polar Research Center at The Ohio State University. His research has propelled the field of ice core paleoclimatology out of the Polar Regions to the highest tropical and subtropical ice fields. He and the OSU team have developed light-weight solar-powered drilling equipment for acquisition of histories from ice fields in the tropical South American Andes, the Himalayas, and on Kilimanjaro. These paleoclimate histories have advanced our understanding of the coupled nature of the Earth's climate system. Special emphasis has been placed on the El Nino and monsoon systems that dominate the climate of the tropical Pacific and affect global-scale oceanic and atmospheric circulation patterns. His observations of glacier retreat over the last three decades confirm that glaciers around the world are melting and provide clear evidence that the warming of the last 50 years is now outside the range of climate variability for several millennia, if not longer. Please see http://bprc.osu.edu/Icecore/GroupP.html#lonniethompson or http://www.geology.ohio-state.edu/faculty_bios.php?id=52 for more details.

C. Susan Weiler

Whitman College

C. SUSAN WEILER is an oceanographer by training and awardee of the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography’s Distinguished Service Award “for outstanding leadership in the professional development and mentoring of the next generation of aquatic scientists.” She received her Ph.D. in oceanography from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Her research focused on coastal and open-ocean ecology, using physiological approaches to assess the community structure and function of phytoplankton. After three years of post-doctoral work (University of British Columbia, Canada; University of St. Andrews, Scotland and University of Oslo, Norway), she followed her husband to Whitman College in 1981 and founded a position as a Research Associate. This position has enabled her to work in many capacities. She was a visiting assistant professor at Whitman from 1983 – 1987 and taught biology, environmental studies and general studies. During 1987-1988 she served a rotation at the U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Office of Polar Programs (1987-1988) and was involved with setting up the NSF UV-Monitoring Network and managing the first call for proposals dealing with the biological consequences of the Antarctic ozone hole. She served as the Executive Director for the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography from 1990 – 1999. She has also directed programs to enhance minority participation in the aquatic sciences. From 1993 – 2006, Susan organized the DIALOG symposium series and electronic resources to foster interdisciplinary understanding and collaborations across the aquatic sciences.

Beginning in 1999, her work expanded from aquatic science to Earth system science and since 2002 she has developed symposia and electronic resources to foster international, interdisciplinary understanding and collaborations among natural and social scientists conducting research related to climate change, impacts and solutions. The goal is to catalyze understanding of the Earth system, including the human dimension, and transform this knowledge into effective action to build a more sustainable planet.

Sheldon Drobot

University of Colorado

SHELDON D. DROBOT is an Applied Climatologist with the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research at the University of Colorado. Originally from Canada, Sheldon has formal training in remote sensing and meteorology. His current polar research examines interannual variations in Arctic sea-ice, and in particular, the environmental conditions behind the recent decline in ice. Based on these analyses, his work also focuses on providing probabilistic seasonal ice forecasts.

Jenny Baeseman

ARCUS/APECS/IARC

JENNY BAESEMAN grew up on a dairy farm in Central Wisconsin and has spent several seasons studying streams in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica. Her training includes a B.S. in Water Chemistry from the University of WI - Stevens Point, M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota, a Ph.D. also in Civil Engineering with an environmental emphasis, postdoctoral training in geosciences at Princeton University, as well as experience in the academic world as an Assistant Professor in Biological Sciences. Currently, she is the Program Development Coordinator for the Arctic Research Consortium of the US (ARCUS) and based at the International Arctic Research Center (IARC) at the University of Alaska - Fairbanks.

Other Presenters

Christina Olex

CHRISTINA OLEX is a graduate of Bradley University and holds a Bachelor's degree in Psychology focusing in Organizational Behavior and Leadership. Olex is a certified trainer for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator™ through the Association for Psychological Type; DISC™ through Inscape Publishing; Effective Intelligence™ through Connective Intelligence Inc.; and Emotional Intelligence through the Institute for Health and Human Potential.

In her free time, Chris has been a participant and a program leader for Outward Bound and has hiked the 2,200 mile Appalachian Trail. In her past, Chris worked with Orion International, a management consulting firm; the University of Michigan’s Challenge Program, an outdoor, experiential, team-building low and high ropes course; and Aviat, a developer and distributor of materials for human resource consultants and trainers. Through these roles, Chris designed and delivered a variety of team-building and performance enhancement sessions.