Greenland

Mikkel Høegh Bojesen is a Remote Sensing and GIS analyst at Asiaq, Nuuk, where he works on research and development projects, producing topographic maps and mapping of natural resources. He has also been very involved in the Arctic DEM initiative, assisting in the improvement of the Greenland portion, in collaboration with the Polar Geospatial Center, University of Minnesota. Before coming to Asiaq, Mikkel worked eight years at the University of Copenhagen, conducting research and teaching on topics related to GIS, spatial multi criteria decision making and natural resource management, mainly within agriculture. He earned his PhD in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics and has an educational background in forest management also from the University of Copenhagen.

Lars Demant-Poort has lived in Greenland since 2002, working in science education. He has served as a public school teacher, consultant of science and now as an Assistant Professor of Science Education at the University of Greenland. During the past six years, his research in science education at the public school level has been centered around three major topics of interest: structural conditions for students’ science learning and interest development; how nature and the outdoors is part of teaching; and, student experience of science teaching.

Klaus Georg Hansen is a PhD in planning, social anthropology and Greenlandic culture and language. He currently serves as the Head of the Interior Division for the Government of Greenland. His research topics include: colonial history of Greenland, kayak dizziness, demography in the Arctic, and large-scale industrial development in the Arctic. Communication and outreach have always been of high priority, as Dr. Hansen has focused on communication to and with a broad audience as well as with scientific communities through conference papers, scientific articles, public presentations, newspaper articles, radio, and film. He has previously held positions in Greenland as the head of the national library, head of Sisimiut Museum, head of division of national spatial planning, head of faculty at Ilisimatusarfik, and deputy director at Nordregio (Sweden). Currently, Dr. Hansen is involved in two USA lead research projects: ASUS (societal sustainability in the Arctic) and Arctic PIRE (sustainably cities in the Arctic).

Hans Husyan Harmsen is an Archaeologist and Curator at the Greenland National Museum and Archives in Nuuk, Greenland. He completed his PhD from the University at Buffalo’s Department of Anthropology in 2017 with a focus on exploring prehistoric human responses to environmental change along the southeast coast of Sri Lanka and has participated in NSF-funded archaeological projects in Kamchatka and the Aleutian Islands. He is the former Associate Director of the University at Buffalo’s Social Systems GIS Laboratory and still connected to UB’s Department of Anthropology as a Research Assistant Professor. Over the past two years he has been involved as a research partner in the REMAINS of Greenland project, exploring the effects of a shifting climate on the preservation of archaeological deposits in West Greenland and the consequent challenges to protecting and preserving Greenland’s cultural heritage.

Julie Hollis is the Head of Department of Geology in the Ministry of Mineral Resources, Government of Greenland. Julie is a geologist with fifteen years experience in Australia and Greenland, managing regional geoscience projects focused on producing new geological maps. The focus of her and the Department of Geology's work is to promote exploration investment by delivering geoscience data and advice. Julie received her BSc in Geology from the University of Sydney and PhD from the University of Edinburgh. She has worked as a postdoctoral researcher and for three different geological survey organizations in Australia and Denmark before starting with the Ministry of Mineral Resources in Greenland almost four years ago.

Lene Kielsen Holm is Research Scientist and Project Leader in the Climate and Society Research Group at the Greenland Climate Research Centre. She is an anthropologist who has worked on environmental and Indigenous Peoples issues for the past 20 years and has lead several projects significant to the Inuit in Greenland and other Inuit regions of the Arctic. She has been advocating for the inclusion of the Indigenous Peoples knowledge in research throughout the Arctic.

Thomas Juul-Pedersen has been involved in Arctic research for the past 17 years and holds a PhD degree in Arctic marine biology. He works as a research scientist and education coordinator at the Greenland Climate Research Centre, at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, studying Arctic marine ecosystems and the effects of climate change. Thomas has been managing and participating in two ongoing marine monitoring programs since 2008 and has spent more than a year in the field onboard scientific research vessels and at various field camps. He also teaches and coordinates natural science education at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources. Thomas lives and works permanently in Nuuk, Greenland. Before coming to Greenland, Thomas did a PhD in Canada working with the high-Arctic marine ecosystems. He collaborates with many institutions outside Greenland, often presenting and promoting research in Greenland at meetings, workshops and in different international working groups.

Kirsty Langley is a Researcher in the fields of climate and cryosphere within the Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring Program. She has been based at Asiaq, Nuuk, since 2015, working on remote sensing projects focused on hydrology, climate and the environment. Diverse projects span topics from characterization of coastal environments to ice-marginal lakes, rock glaciers and peripheral glaciers. She has a PhD in Geophysics and Glaciology from the University of Oslo, a MSc in Geophysics from the University of Iceland and a BSc in Geophysics from University College London.

Mîtdlârak Lennert is a PhD fellow at the Institute of Social Science, Economics and Journalism, University of Greenland. Her research interests are in the area of education policy and developmental evaluation. She is currently researching the reform processes in the Greenlandic education system. Specifically, Mîtdlârak is interested in what type of data and information are gathered and used in the different levels of management in the education system – the Self-government, the municipalities and the public schools – with a focus on management forms and their evaluation and monitoring processes. The main objective of her Ph.D. project is to analyze the Greenland education governance system and how the central level design, organize and steer education systems across complex multilevel governance arrangements. In governing educational systems, she aims to access how the central and the decentralized levels interact and communicate and how this affects trust, cooperation and negotiation of conflicts.

Nette Levermann is the Head of Section, Ministry of Fisheries, Hunting and Agriculture.

Arnajaaq Lynge is Secretary for the Greenland Research Council. The Greenland Research Council works to promote and strengthen Greenlandic research, which is rooted in and benefits Greenland. In her position, Arnajaaq disseminates PhD and postdoc projects, communicates statistics on all the projects the Council funds, and reports when projects wholly or partially are finished. She also disseminates research strategies of Greenland’s research institutions. Arnajaaq earned a Masters in Social Sciences from Ilisimatusarfik, University of Greenland in 2017.

Christian Koch Madsen is an archaeologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Greenland National Museum & Archives / National Museum of Denmark. During the last 15 years, he has worked with Greenland’s archaeology and cultural heritage by participating in and directing both research and cultural resource management projects. In his own research, Christian has specialized in the landscape and settlement archaeology of Greenland’s medieval Norse settlements, although his current position allows him to work in numerous ways with all of Greenland’s history. Some of these projects have been made possible only by NSF-funding, not at least through the international research cooperative of the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO). Continuous regional research investment as that sustained by NABO for more than a decade is one of the strongest tools for providing new perspectives on complex human-ecodynamics in the Arctic through deep local knowledge and local friendships.

Eva Mätzler is a researcher and head of Remote Sensing at Asiaq Greenland Survey. She is a geologist from the University of Berne in Switzerland, and has worked at Asiaq since 2008. She is involved in research projects focused on climate and environment, specifically on topics such as ice-marginal lakes, permafrost degradation, hazard assessments and coastal studies.

Kirstine Eiby Møller is a curator in the Greenland National Museum and Archives with specialization in intangible cultural heritage and the UNESCO convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. She has a background in archaeology and holds a MA in Sustainable Heritage Management. She is interested in the way heritage renegotiates histories, memories, identities and emotions as articulated in policies and practices. More specifically, her work examines how intangible heritage practices undergoes changes, revitalization or are intentionally forgotten. She is currently a guest lecturer at Ilisimatusarfik, the University of Greenland, and teaches the undergraduate course “The history of Greenland and didactics of history”.

Gert Mulvad is a MD, GP, Doctor h.c., at the Greenland Center for Health Research, Ilisimatusarfik, University of Greenland. He is also a family physician at the Centre for Primary Health Care in Nuuk, Greenland. He has been working in Nuuk since 1986. His areas of research include traditional food risks/benefits and family health. He serves on many committees involved in health care delivery, research and education in Greenland and is Chair of the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources. He received a Doctor PhD honoris causa in 2015 from Ilisimatusarfik, University of Greenland. Internationally, he is active in AMAP Human Health working group, Committee for Inuit Circumpolar Health, Chair of the Arctic Health and well-being network under the University of the Arctic.

Josephine Nymand is the co-lead GL coordinator for the Nuuk workshop, she is a biologist and holds a PhD in wildlife population biology and an MSc in petrel breeding biology from the University of Copenhagen. She is presently chair of the Greenland Research Council, to which she was appointed in 2017. Josephine is also head of the Department of Environment and Mineral Resources at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources (GINR). Josephine is native to Greenland and has been engaged in research topics related to Greenland since she was an undergraduate student at the University of Copenhagen. Applied science has always been an important aspect of her work. Since 2007, Josephine has worked as a scientist at GINR, monitoring the effects of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems, assessing the impact of caribou grazing on vegetation, and giving management advice to the Greenland Government about the sustainable use of caribou and muskoxen. Before working at GINR, Josephine spent several years working at the Danish National Environmental Research Institute (now Danish Centre for Environment and Energy). Josephine has hands-on experience with incorporating local knowledge and traditional use of resources into oil spill sensitivity atlases. Presently, Josephine is lead scientist in the group advising the Government of Greenland on environmental issues related to the extractive industry.

Allan Olsen is a research coordinator at Greenland Perspective working out of Ilisimatusarfik, the University of Greenland in Nuuk. He focuses on anchoring science about Greenland in the Greenlandic science community in an effort to contribute to building up competence and capacity of the Greenlandic research institutions in collaboration with local and international partners. He also focuses on activating research into the Greenlandic society, connecting research projects with the Greenlandic society, business community and authorities. Allan is currently facilitating an agricultural research network in Greenland with a report expected in 2019, initiating a research collaboration looking into the Greenlandic labour market and heads the organizing committee behind the upcoming Greenland Week of Science & Polar Researcher Day conference in December 2019. Allan is an MSc in Social Science from the University of Aarhus.

Hans Kristian Olsen is the AS Research Coordinator at Ilisimatusarfik - The University of Greenland and former CEO of NUNAOIL A/S, the National Oil Company of Greenland. He has experience in petroleum and mineral exploration as a geologist and as president and vice president in private companies and at the Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum in Greenland. He received a M. Sc. in geology from the University of Aarhus, Denmark in 1988, a Diploma of Management from Aarhus Business College, Denmark in 2002, and an MBA from the University of Aalborg, Denmark in 2014.

Martin Olsen is Head of Department for Hydrology, Climate and Environment at Asiaq Greenland Survey, where he has been employed since 2017. His department is responsible for the Climate Basis activities under the Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring Program, as well as the Greenlandic National Weather Observations Network and the Hydrological Observations Network for hydropower potentials on the West coast of Greenland. He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science, an M.S. in Environmental Biology and Geography and a B.S. in Environmental Biology from the Roskilde University.

Qupanuk Olsen is the Head of the Inspection and Technical department at the Mineral Licence and Safety Authority, The Ministry of Mineral Resources, Labour and the Interior, Government of Greenland. The Inspection and Technical department issues permission to field activities for mineral exploration and exploitation in Greenland. One of the main tasks in her department is to ensure that the exploitation of minerals in Greenland is carried out properly in terms of health and safety. Qupanuk has a Master of Engineering Science (Mining) from Western Australian School of Mines, Curtin University. She is the first and only mining engineer from Greenland currently. With her background and knowledge in the mineral and mining industry she has an overview of all mineral activities in Greenland. Qupanuk is a great proponent for Greenlandic young people to study in mining.

Jette Rygaard is head of department and associate professor in the Department of Language, Literature and Media at Ilisimatusarfik (University of Greenland). Her interests include literary and media theory, feminist theory, cultural studies, visual anthropology, sensory ethnography and photography. She has lived and worked in Greenland for over 25 years and conducted a variety of research projects in communities throughout the country. She has worked extensively with youth in Greenland and is currently a Co-PI on the National Science Foundation funded project entitled, Rockwell Kent and Early 1930s Greenland.

Simon Thaarup is a Geologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland’s (GEUS) office in Nuuk. He has done geological fieldwork in a number of different geological settings in West Greenland, e.g. mapping the zinc and lead potential in the Uummannaq-Upernavik district, ground truthing hyper spectral imagery in the Kangerlussuaq area, and investigating the gold potential in Godthåbsfjorden. He is co-author on a geological guidebook for tourist and locals describing the geology in Godthåbsfjorden. Simon is responsible for GEUS’ involvement in the EU funded project UpDeep, which aims to identify and prioritize exploration targets, using low environmental impact exploration techniques. Simon holds a MSc in Geology (2015) from Aarhus University.

Sten Lund is the lead GL coordinator for the Nuuk workshop. He has been Research Coordinator since 2014 at the Government of Greenland. He is educated M.Sc. in Public Administration. Sten is responsible for managing research legislation in Greenland, coordinating research initiatives, thereby ensuring the realization of Naalakkersuisut's objectives in research policy. Coordinate contact between authorities and the research community. Providing and managing dissemination with a view to anchoring research for the benefit of Greenlandic society. Sten has solid knowledge of the political system's development in Greenland, and is often used as a political expert in the Greenlandic media.

Kisser Thorsøe is Chief Advisor, Head of Office at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), Nuuk. She has been in charge of GEUS’ office in Nuuk since 2013. Kisser has broad experience within human resources and economy, and project management and administration of EU funded research projects. Furthermore, she has strong experience in fieldwork planning and logistics in Greenland. She holds a MSc in Physical Geography (2002) from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and a diploma in leadership (2012) from the Business Academy Aarhus, Denmark.

United States

Alden Adolph is an Assistant Professor of Physics at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. She is interested in structural, optical, and thermal properties of snow, especially as they relate to snow albedo, the temperature of snow and near-surface air, and snow melt processes. Her work involves local projects to study seasonal snow (in New Hampshire as a graduate student and now in Minnesota) and projects in Greenland to investigate snow processes on the ice sheet. As a professor at a small liberal arts college, she is keenly interested in the intersection of high impact research and undergraduate education. Alden received her B.A., B.E., and Ph.D. from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College where her thesis work focused on physical properties of snow and firn.

Mary R. Albert is Professor of Engineering at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. She is also Executive Director of the U.S. Ice Drilling Program Office. At Dartmouth she teaches classes on climate change and engineering, and also she and her graduate students conduct research on climate change in two ways: understanding evidence of past climate change using ice cores from the polar ice sheets, and also preparing adaptation and mitigation strategies that will be needed for current climate change. She has led and participated in many research expeditions on both the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets. Dr. Albert earned her B.S. in Mathematics from Penn State University, a B.E. in Engineering Sciences from Dartmouth, and a Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics and Engineering Sciences in 1991 from the University of California, San Diego.

Kelly Brunt is an Associate Research Scientist with the University of Maryland Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center and the NASA Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory. She obtained a B.S. and an M.S. in Geology from Syracuse University and the University of Montana, respectively. She received her Ph.D. in Geophysics from the University of Chicago in 2008, modeling ice-shelf flow and the connection between ice shelves and the ocean. As a postdoctoral scholar at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, she worked on Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) laser altimetry data. Dr. Brunt is currently part of the ICESat-2 mission (scheduled to launch in 2018), and is working on post-launch calibration and validation of the satellite elevation data.

Zoe Courville is a research mechanical engineer with the US Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, NH. She received her masters and doctorate degrees from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. She has worked in Greenland for the last fifteen years on a variety of science and engineering projects at Summit Station in the middle of the ice sheet, the Danish drilling camp NEEM, and Thule Air Force Base, including two traverses across the ice sheet to Summit Station. For the past seven years, she has worked as a member of the Science Coordination Office for Summit Station to help facilitate science for the research community and advise the US National Science Foundation with regards to station management and resources.

Lauren E. Culler is the lead U.S. coordinator for the Nuuk workshop. She is a Research Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Dartmouth and has conducted scientific research in Greenland since 2009. She co-leads the NSF-funded Joint Science Education Project in Greenland and the Joint Antarctic School Expedition in Antarctica. Her research is focused on how tundra food webs are impacted by warming temperatures and hydrologic change and she is known in Greenland for her work on Arctic mosquitoes. Lauren is co-lead of the Network for Arthropods of the Tundra (NeAT), a University of the Arctic thematic network. She holds a Ph.D. in Ecology from Dartmouth, a M.S. in Entomology and a B.S. in Biology from the University of Maryland.

Denis Defibaugh is a tenured professor at Rochester Institute of Technology and chair of the Advertising Photography Program. Denis has participation in over 30 solo exhibitions in galleries, museums, and cultural centers. His recent work Afterlifes of Natural History was exhibited in Arles, France during Fotofest and featured in Smithsonian.com. The work Family Ties do not Die, The Day of the Dead in Oaxaca, Mexico has been displayed in museums and cultural centers including three exhibitions in Texas and numerous shows in San Francisco, Miami, Rochester, Buffalo, Kansas, Colorado and Montana. These photographs were published by TCU Press in his first book, The Day of the Dead. His documentary and travel photographs earned a Fulbright-Hays Travel/Study Grant to Mexico, and most recently a National Science Foundation award to produce the Rockwell Kent and Early 1930’s Greenland, A Comparative View of Environmental, Social and Cultural Change in Contemporary Greenland.

Hajo Eicken is Professor of Geophysics and Director of the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His research focuses on sea ice geophysics, Arctic coastal processes, and their importance for human activities and ecosystems. In Alaska he has helped lead efforts to advance collaborative research with Indigenous knowledge holders and to enhance use of scientific data by Arctic communities and government agencies. This work draws on a number of different approaches, including participatory scenarios and community-based monitoring. For more than a decade, he has worked with colleagues to establish a sea-ice observatory at Utqiaġvik/Pt. Barrow. Other collaborative efforts include his involvement in launching the Sea Ice for Walrus Outlook (SIWO) and contributions to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium’s Local Environmental Observer Network.

Bo Gregersen is a Danish national and serves as Scientific Affairs Specialist in the Regional Environment, Science, Technology and Health Office at the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark. His office covers the Nordic, Baltic, and Western European regions.

Lenore A. Grenoble is the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the study of contact linguistics, language shift and vitality, and language documentation, and the study of language practices as contextually and culturally situated. She is currently studying the impact of urbanization, cultural and climate change in the Arctic, with fieldwork in Greenland, Norway, and the Sakha Republic in the Russian Federation. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and her current projects are supported by the National Science Foundation’s program in Documenting Endangered Languages, the Fulbright Arctic Chair Norway, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Jay T. Johnson is Professor and Associate Chair of Geography and Atmospheric Science at the University of Kansas where he also directs the Center for Indigenous Research, Science, and Technology. His research focuses on Indigenous peoples' cultural survival, particularly in the areas of resource management, political activism at the national and international levels, and the philosophies and politics of place that underpin the drive for cultural survival. Much of his work is comparative in nature but has focused predominately on New Zealand, the Pacific, and North America. He is the co-author along with, Soren C. Larsen of the University of Missouri, of Being Together in Place: Indigenous Coexistence in a More Than Human World, published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2017.

Ellen Martin is a Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Florida and the Co-Director of the Florida Climate Institute. Her research on paleoceanography and paleoclimatology uses the geochemistry of deep sea sediment to reconstruct past climate conditions and understand climate sensitivity. Her work in Greenland focuses on studying the chemistry of glacial and nonglacial waters to understand how fluxes from glacial and nonglacial landscapes are transported to the ocean, how these fluxes may vary as the ice sheet retreats, how these variations may impact future climate, and how resulting marine sedimentary records can be used to interpret past ice sheet dynamics. She is a University of Florida Term Professor and a Fellow of the Geological Society of America.

Jon Martin is Professor of Geological Sciences at the University of Florida. His research interests center on water chemistry, hydrology, and hydrogeology, particularly related to flow of groundwater, interactions between surface water and groundwater, magnitudes of solute fluxes to coastal zones and greenhouse gas exchange with the atmosphere. In Greenland, his research interest focuses on evaluating how nutrient and gas fluxes differ between watersheds that are connected to the ice sheet, and thus drain predominately meltwater, and watersheds that are separated from the ice sheet, and thus drain only annual precipitation and permafrost meltwaters. Specifically, he is interested in how chemical reactions of watersheds in these two distinct landscapes differ as a result of exposure age following the retreat of the ice sheet since the Last Glacial maximum.

Jennifer Mercer is the Arctic Research Support and Logistics Program Manager at the National Science Foundation. She has a broad scientific background with extensive field experience and logistics management in both the Arctic and Antarctica. Dr. Mercer has also managed NSF’s Arctic Observing Network (AON) program and currently co-leads the Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee’s (IARPC) Atmosphere team and is Chair of the International Forum of Arctic Research Operators. She was the 2017 Embassy Science Fellow at the U.S. Embassy in Denmark.

Nimesh Patel is a radio astronomer working with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Submillimeter Array (SMA) project since 1994. His research interests include astrochemistry, evolved stars, star-formation and astrophysical masers. Prior to joining SAO, Dr. Patel was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Five College Radio Astronomy Department, during 1991-1994. He obtained his Ph.D. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science in 1990. Dr. Patel has been involved with various instrumentation projects, and has participated in the development of the SMA since its early construction phase, in Massachusetts and in Hawaii. Since 2012, Dr. Patel has been working on the Greenland Telescope project. Addressing big questions in astronomy will require construction of large telescopes, to be built by the next generation of young engineers, physicists and astronomers. He is contributing to the development of such a talent pool through his efforts in education and outreach, as an instructor for the laboratory undergraduate research course at Harvard, a mentor to high-school and undergraduate students, and participant in public outreach science festivals. Dr. Patel became a naturalized US citizen in 2002 and is a member of the American Astronomical Society, the International Astronomical Union, and the International Union of Radio Sciences.

Elizabeth Rink conducts community based participatory research (CBPR) with Indigenous communities in Montana, Greenland and Finland to address the socio-ecological determinants of reproductive health. Her research focuses on the extent to which colonialism, historical loss and trauma, structural violence and climate change impact reproductive health disparities in Indigenous communities. As faculty at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, Dr. Rink is a researcher with the Center of American Indian and Rural Health Equity and a research mentor in the Montana – Alaska American Indian/Alaska Native Center for Clinical and Translational Research. Her research has received funding from the US Office of Population Affairs, the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health. For the past 12 years Dr. Rink has collaborated with Dr. Gitte Alder Reimer at Ilismatusarfik to conduct CBPR with Greenlandic communities to reduce reproductive health disparities. Currently Dr. Rink is a scholar with the Fulbright Arctic Initiative Program 2018-2019.

Cynthia Suchman is Program Director for Arctic Natural Sciences (ANS) at the National Science Foundation. Her scientific background is in biological oceanography and she worked for several years in the Division of Ocean Sciences prior to moving to the Office of Polar Programs in 2016. She has interest and experience in managing interdisciplinary and interagency programs within NSF as well as regional funding organizations in Virginia and Alaska.

Kirsty Tinto is an Associate Research Scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. Her research interests consider how the underlying landscape and geology influence the flow of ice sheets. She has been involved in large-scale airborne geophysics campaigns in both the Arctic and Antarctic for nearly a decade, including Operation IceBridge, Oceans Melting Greenland and the development of the IcePod instrument suite. She has an undergraduate degree in Earth Sciences from Oxford University, England, and a PhD in Geophysics from Otago University, New Zealand.

Susan Vanek, a sociocultural anthropology PhD student at Binghamton University (SUNY), is in the final stages of her dissertation work on state sponsored development in Greenland. Her initial 12 months of fieldwork in the communities of Nuuk, Maniitsoq and Tasiilaq, Greenland was funded by an International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council, with additional fieldwork supported provided by a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation and an American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellowship. She has presented papers stemming from her dissertation research at the American Anthropological Association’s Annual Meetings, the International Congress of Arctic Social Science and during four summer schools in Norway, Sweden, Russia, and most recently at the Vienna Arctic Summer School in Austria in the summer of 2016. She is currently a Co-PI on the National Science Foundation funded project entitled, Rockwell Kent and Early 1930s Greenland. She has conducted research in Greenland for 6 years.

Ross Virginia is the co-lead U.S. coordinator for the Nuuk workshop. He is the Myers Family Professor of Environmental Science at Dartmouth College where he also directs the Institute of Arctic Studies. His research is focused on climate change impacts on the biodiversity and nutrient cycles of soil ecosystems in the Arctic and Antarctic. Dr. Virginia is a Distinguished Co-Lead Scholar for the Fulbright Arctic Initiative and is a Global Fellow for the Polar Initiative at Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars where he works on polar science and policy issues. He directs the U.S. contributions to the Joint Science Education Project in Greenland and is a member of the Board of Governors for Ilisimatusarfik (University of Greenland) and the University of the Arctic. He holds a M.S. and Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California, Davis and a B.S. in Biology from the State University of New York, Syracuse.

Jeff Welker is a Professor in Arctic Ecology and Biogeochemistry and is the Inaugural UArctic Research Chair with a joint appointment between the University of Oulu, Finland and the University of Alaska, Anchorage. Dr. Welker has been using observational and experimental studies at Thule, NW Greenland since 2003 as part of the Biocomplexity and AON ITEX programs. His research teams have discovered that: a) polar semi-deserts that are warmer and wetter will become stronger C sinks; b) ancient permafrost C is leaking into the modern atmosphere and being discharged into the Arctic Ocean; c) moisture sources exhibit distinct water vapor isotopic signatures when they are from either the ice sheet or the open water of Baffin Bay; and, d) sea birds provide a record of Arctic Ocean food webs. Future studies will continue to monitor the Arctic water isotope cycle in conjunction with measurements at Nord, in Arctic Finland and aboard the Polarstern icebreaker as part of MOSAiC.