Aggie Polar Palooza Speakers Announced

College Station, Texas, August 29, 2008

The final slate of speakers for the upcoming Aggie Polar Palooza on November 5, 2008 has been agreed. In addition to the Polar Palooza National Technical Team from Passport to Knowledge, the following four speakers will be featured.

Mary R. Albert - Dr. Albert was Chair of the U.S. Committee to the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008, a committee of the Polar Research Board of the National Academy of Science, from its inception in 2003 until June 2005. Mary received her Ph.D. in engineering sciences from the University of California San Diego. Her current research is centered on transfer processes in porous media, including air-snow exchange in the polar regions and in soils in temperate areas. Mary is also an adjunct professor at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College, where she serves as thesis advisor to students at undergraduate, Master's, and Ph.D. levels. She is a strong supporter of education and outreach, and works with the National Science Teachers Association and with science centers and museums to engage the general public and students. She is prinicipal investigator on snow research at Summit Station, and is the U.S. Principal Investigator on the Norwegian-U.S. Traverse from Troll Station to the South Pole. Her work can be seen in the POLAR-PALOOZA mini-series of podcasts. For more details .....

George Divoky - Research Associate, Institute of Arctic Biology, UAF - Studying the Black Guillemots of Cooper Island has been a mostly solitary venture for George Divoky for over 33 years. Yet it is precisely this type of extended data set that is needed to monitor the long-term cycles and trends related to climate change and other atmospheric variations. Dr. Divoky, in some ways, is the "Charles David Keeling of biology", with research rivaling the 50+ years recording of the gradual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. George is founder of the "Friends of Cooper Island" and serves as its Director in collaboration with a governing board. George has been studying seabirds in arctic Alaska since 1970 and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he is a Research Associate at the Institute of Arctic Biology. For more details...

Sean Topkok - Alaska Native Knowledge Network - Sean Topkok is Indigenous Curriculum Specialist with the Alaska Native Knowledge Network. Sean worked with ARCUS from 1997 to 2005. Though currently employed as Information Systems Professional with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, he continues to be closely associated with ARCUS on various educational programs. Sean can usually be found working to maintain the Alaska Native Knowledge Network website, or helping rural communities document cultural knowledge with Cultural Atlases. When not identifying, cataloguing, and distributing Indigenous curriculum materials, Sean may be found spending time with his wife Amy and their three sons Christopher, Aaron, and Joseph. For more details....

Henrietta Edmonds - Associate Professor, Marine Geochemistry, Research Scientist, UT Marine Science Institute. Dr. Edmonds' research interests can be divided into two broad categories: tracer oceanography and hydrothermal geochemistry. She says, "One theme that links my work in these diverse areas is the use of uranium series radionuclides as natural tracers of various processes, for example particle cycling or water mass formation and circulation rates, in these systems. I use both radiochemical ("counting") equipment and mass spectrometers (TIMS and ICPMS) as analytical tools, depending on the half lives of the isotopes I am looking at, and the size of the samples I have available to me. I also use inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICPMS) for analysis of long-lived radionuclides, metals, and rare-earth elements (REE's) in water and particulate samples." For more details....