A vast wall of ice stretching across the horizon and engulfing all the mountains that lay before it: these were my first impressions of the Greenland Ice Sheet. I was no stranger to glaciers having lived for the last few years in the Swiss Alps, but I was taken aback […]
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Antarctica InSync (International Science & Infrastructure for Synchronous Observation) is a new major programme led by the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). The programme aims to better understand, protect and sustainably manage the Southern Ocean and Antarctica in the framework of the UN Decade […]
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Following the agreement between Université Laval (ULaval), the Institut Nordique du Québec (INQ) and the Swiss Polar Institute (SPI), researchers based in Switzerland can have access as visiting scientists to the vessel’s annual Arctic missions as part of collaborative research projects between teams from the SPI network and researchers from […]
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The calls for proposals for the SPI Exploratory Grants and SPI Technogrants are now open! The SPI Exploratory Grants support Swiss-based scientists active in polar regions (including remote high-altitude regions such as the Andes and the Himalayas) by allowing them to launch new short-term ideas such as pilot projects, fund additional fieldwork, or initiate […]
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The 3rd call for proposals for the Mertz Fellowship is now open. Launched in 2022, the programme aims to promote collaboration and networking between Swiss and Australian polar and high-altitude science communities, with a focus on early-career researchers. The Mertz Fellowship is dedicated to PhD students and early-career researchers (max. […]
Read More Starting this summer with the SPI Exploratory Grants and the SPI Technogrants, the Swiss Polar Institute has reviewed its funding instruments to assess and lower the environmental footprint of Swiss scientific research in polar and high-altitude regions. Changes include cleantech and alternative data acquisition methods. Applicants will also be encouraged […]
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In the summer of 2023, we started our project ArcticAir, characterising microbial communities of the Arctic atmosphere. David and Becky were the sampling team. They flew to Reykjavik (Iceland) and boarded the Commandant Charcot, a tourist ship from the PONANT company, for a month-long cruise through the Northwest Passage. The […]
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Hi everyone! I’m Matthias Jaggi, a technical staff member of the Snow Physics group of the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, and I recently spent a second austral summer at the French-Italian research station Dome C in Antarctica. I set up an experiment with the aim of better […]
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In collaboration with Swiss skipper Oliver Heer, the free educational programme Swiss Polar Class will publish new learning content focused on oceans during the famous Vendée Globe race. Available in French and German, this new module for primary schools offers a novel way to better understand the role oceans play […]
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