Two exciting projects funded through the Koni Steffen Grant will start their work in 2022:
Greenland-Switzerland Avalanche Collaboration, led by Jürg Schweizer (WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF), Marco Marcer (Technical University of Denmark), and Alexandra Messerli (Asiaq Greenland Survey).
and
SULEQATIGIIPPUGUT (Greenlandic for 'we collaborate'), led by Markus Stoffel (Université de Genève) and Eva Mätzler (Ministry of Mineral Resources and Justice, Government of Greenland & Greenland Research Council).
About the Koni Steffen grant
In 2021, the SPI, in collaboration with the Greenland Research Council (NIS), launched a call for interest for a new funding opportunity, the Konrad Steffen Grant.
In memory of Konrad Steffen, one of the founders of the Swiss Polar Institute and its first Scientific Director, the Konrad Steffen Grant (KSG) builds on his legacy of collaborative research between researchers based in Switzerland and Greenland on environmental change in Greenland.
The KSG was designed to provide seed money for collaborative research on the topic of Natural Hazards in Greenland. The hope is that the first two KSG projects will foster exchange of expertise, networking, and future collaboration opportunities between Swiss and Greenlandic researchers to address some of the big challenges ahead related to natural hazards in Greenland.
The concept of the KSG (see full description here) was presented during an information meeting held in December 2021, which was followed by an in-person workshop held in Nuuk in March 2022.
Workshop
A two-day workshop took place in Nuuk on 7 & 8 March 2022 to bring Swiss and Greenlandic scientists together and define the projects to be funded. The workshop was not intended to be competitive but rather a platform to maximise the opportunity for networking and allow the bottom-up collaborative development of projects with the most effective spread of available funding. The in-person workshop resulted in a concise description of the projects, including timeline and budget.
See also our news article about the Koni Steffen Grant workshop.
