January 2025 - It has been quite a year! While I didn’t go into the field myself, there was still plenty of travel and coordination for fieldwork in the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. From Germany to Washington, D.C., with stops in Australia, Sweden, Austria, Telluride, Denmark, San Diego, India, and France along the way, I attended numerous meetings and workshops to present our CSU team’s research and plan upcoming major field efforts in the polar regions. Over the past year, we have been collecting ice-nucleating particles (INPs) and bioaerosol samples at Davis Station, Antarctica, while identical samples were gathered on multiple research voyages in the Southern Ocean. One of the most memorable experiences from my travels was celebrating my 40th birthday in India, where I have never been before. What a fun day to have an invited plenary talk and cake :)

Looking ahead to 2025, we’re wrapping up data analysis and publications from three different Arctic projects, while preparing for two more research voyages and the start of an 18-month field campaign at Palmer Station, Antarctica. That’s right—come September 2025, I’ll be heading down to hang out with the penguins for up to three months!

June 2024 - I did it again, I wrote a funny field blog as an instrument mentor for the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement research facility (DOE ARM) based on my field site visit to Tassie, mate. Check it out here.

January 2024 - What a wild ride it's been since we thawed out from the Arctic ARTofMELT expedition! Our team has been working tirelessly in the lab, analyzing the hundreds of samples we brought back. If you want the lowdown on all the frosty escapades and thrilling discoveries from our time in the field, dive into my field blogs. Recently, I've been orchestrating some serious behind-the-scenes action. Picture this: shipments of sampling equipment and supplies zooming off to Hobart, Tasmania, where they embarked on not one, not two, but three different research cruises in the Southern Ocean. Oh, and we didn't forget about the remote field site in East Antarctica - Davis Station. Fun fact: a ship only swings by Davis Station once a year, so we had to pack enough supplies to last until fall 2025. It's like preparing for a year-long Antarctic camping trip, but with extra lab gloves and fewer marshmallows. Our mission, should we choose to accept it (spoiler alert: we did), revolves around measuring ice nucleating particles (INPs). These are tiny specks of magic in the air, hailing from lands, plants, and oceans. Why are we obsessed with them, you ask? Because they're the VIPs that make polar clouds strut their stuff. So, there you have it - a snapshot of the cool and quirky world of our polar adventures.

October 2023 - Hey, I wrote a funny blog. One of the hats I wear is an instrument mentor for the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement research facility (DOE ARM). I wrote a blog that describes, in a story-telling way, exactly what my team and I do to give data to a community of scientists. Check out that blog here.

Summer 2023 - A blast from the past... A podcast on my team's permafrost work in Arctic Alaska was published. Also, check out our Reath the World outreach expedition page to learn more about the ARCSPIN (the ARCtic Study of Permafrost Ice Nucleation) field expedition that took place in September 2021. Check out some photos from the 2021 expedition below.

April 2023 - A trip to Sweden to install aerosol, seawater, sea ice, and snow sampling equipment on the Swedish icebreaker Oden for the ARTofMELT expedition that starts in early May 2023. I will bring my graduate student, Camille Mavis, to join 38 other scientists from 10 different nations for this 7-week study. Our CSU measurements will focus on ice nucleating particles (INPs) — which are tiny specks of material in the air like microbes or dust that help ice form in clouds — and how these INPs change with warm air entering the Arctic from lower latitudes. The overall goal of the expedition is to better understand warm, moist air that enters the Arctic in the spring that often helps facilitate sea ice melt through an interdisciplinary combination of atmospheric, cryospheric, oceanographic, and ecological measurements.