Appendix A
Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff

Oscar M. E. Schofield (Chair) is a distinguished professor and the chair of the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He is interested in how plankton dynamics structure marine food webs and the feedback on the ocean’s biogeochemistry. His research focus has combined genetics and biochemistry with the development of new ocean observing technologies (satellites, radars, and autonomous underwater vehicles). He is the co-director and the co-founder of the Coastal Ocean Observation Laboratory, which has been awarded and has managed more than $70 million in competitive awards from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Office of Naval Research, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation. Dr. Schofield’s research efforts have focused on polar and temperate waters with extensive efforts in the Southern Ocean, with ongoing research along the West Antarctic Peninsula and the Ross and Amundsen seas. He has received the G. E. Hutchinson Award for ecology as well as awards of distinction from the Naval Research Laboratory and DHS. He completed his B.A. and Ph.D. in biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was a member of the National Academies’ 2015 study committee.

Amy Barger is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research interests include observational cosmology; distant galaxies and supermassive black holes; observations at x-ray, optical, near-infrared, submillimeter, and radio wavelengths; star formation; and accretion histories of the universe. She helped show that the activity of black holes in nearby galaxies was greater and more recent than expected. She also worked with others on discoveries concerning stellar activity in distant galaxies. Dr. Barger is a Guggenheim Fellow and an American Physical Society Fellow and is a member of the International Astronomical Union. She earned a B.A. in astronomy-physics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a Ph.D. in astronomy from King’s College, University of Cambridge.

Kelly Brunt is an associate research scientist with the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland and the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center. She is part of the NASA Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite 2 mission, which uses laser altimeter to determine changes in our polar regions with centimeter-level accuracy. Her role with the mission is with the validation of the

elevation-data accuracy. Her broader interests include the remote sensing and modeling of ice sheet margins. She resigned from the committee in June 2021 in anticipation of her appointment as a program director (rotator) in Arctic Systems Science at NSF. She obtained a B.S. in geology from Syracuse University and an M.S. in geology from the University of Montana. She received her Ph.D. in geophysics from the University of Chicago in 2008. As a postdoctoral scholar at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, she used ICESat laser altimetry data to examine the structure of the grounded margins of ice sheets.

C. Robert Clauer is an emeritus professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. His research interests include experimental and theoretical investigations of the electrodynamic coupling between the solar wind, magnetosphere, and ionosphere using global arrays of ground-based and satellite-based instruments, utilization of computer networks to form knowledge networks in the support of scientific and educational activities, and experimental and theoretical investigations of the geomagnetic storm time ring current. Dr. Clauer has more than two decades of research activity in the areas of solar-terrestrial relationships, solar wind–magnetosphere–ionosphere coupling, storm and substorm phenomenology, and magnetospheric electrodynamics. He pioneered the development and operation of autonomous environmental monitoring platforms in remote regions of the Arctic and Antarctic. He previously served on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Polar Research Board and the Committee on the Development of Strategic Vision for the Antarctic Program. Dr. Clauer received his Ph.D. in geophysics and space physics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1980.

Indrani Das is an associate research professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University. Her research interests include mass balance of Antarctic ice sheets and ice shelves, basal processes in marine ice sheets, remote sensing of glaciers and ice sheets, and ice surface hydrology. Dr. Das also studies paleo observations of accumulation rates and the climate history of the Greenland ice sheet. She studies physical processes that affect the mass balance and stability of ice sheets and ice shelves using a combination of satellite and airborne remote sensing, ground-based measurements, and ice sheet modeling. Dr. Das received her Ph.D. in atmospheric physics from the Indian Space Research Organization in 2007. As a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, she studied the mass balance of Alaskan glaciers using airborne laser altimetry.

William Detrich is a professor of biochemistry and marine biology in the Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences, Northeastern University, Boston, and his laboratory is located at the Marine Science Center in Nahant, Massachusetts. He has studied the cold adaptation of Antarctic marine fishes for more than 35 years, during which he has conducted more than 20 research

expeditions to Palmer and McMurdo stations in Antarctica and has worked frequently in the Palmer Archipelago on board the ARSV Laurence M. Gould. Using comparative genomic and biochemical approaches, Professor Detrich studies how the notothenioid fish of the Antarctic have evolved novel traits that have enabled them to survive and thrive in the chronically frigid Southern Ocean (–1.8 to +1°C). His laboratory determined the evolutionary mechanism by which the Antarctic icefishes, a subgroup of the notothenioids, lost their hemoglobin genes, and he is now exploiting the complete anemia (absence of red blood cells) of the icefishes to discover novel genes required for red cell formation. In 2019, an international consortium including Professor Detrich published the first genome of an icefish (Chaenocephalus aceratus), which will accelerate the evolutionary understanding of these remarkable creatures. Professor Detrich’s lab is also studying the potential impact of a warming Southern Ocean on embryonic development of the notothenioids. His research is relevant both to understanding how Antarctic fishes will respond to climate change and to developing new therapeutics to treat human anemias. He brings to his research a background in biochemistry, molecular, cellular and developmental biology, and genomics. Professor Detrich received his Ph.D. from Yale University.

Michael Gooseff is an associate professor in the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at the University of Colorado. He is currently the lead principal investigator of the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long-Term Ecological Research project and the co-director of the Hydrologic Sciences Graduate Program at Colorado University. Dr. Gooseff conducts ongoing research in Antarctica and in Arctic Alaska. Dr. Gooseff has served on the editorial boards of Eos, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, and Water Resources Research. He is also on the Board of Directors of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. and he is active with the Hydrology Section of the American Geophysical Union. In 2011, he chaired a National Science Foundation review committee for Office of Polar Programs. He received his B.S. from the Georgia Institute of Technology and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Kenneth M. Halanych is the executive director of the Center for Marine Science at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. For much of the report preparation, he served as the Stewart Schneller Endowed Chair and Alumni Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Auburn University where also served as the Marine Biology Program Coordinator. His research interests include marine invertebrate evolution, phylogeography, evolutionary origins and relationships of major metazoan lineages, and diversification of chemosynthetic fauna. His work in the Antarctic has focused on population genetics and evolutionary genomics. He served on the Research Board of the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative that awarded $500 million in funding in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. He is the current editor-in-chief of Biological Bulletin. In 2018, he was named a Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received his B.S. from Wake Forest University and his Ph.D. in zoology from The University of Texas at Austin.

Mark Halpern is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His research interests include experimental cosmology, the history of star formation, and measurements of the geometry and contents of the universe using cosmic microwave background radiation. Dr. Halpern’s research group is involved in a number of different efforts to understand the history of galaxy and star formation in the early universe, including efforts to build two new instruments to facilitate measurement of the universe at high redshift (Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array 2 and the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope). Dr. Halpern was awarded the Gruber Cosmology Prize in 2012. He earned his B.Sc. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Alison Murray is a research professor in the Division of Earth and Ecosystem Sciences at the Desert Research Institute. Dr. Murray is a molecular microbial ecologist and biological oceanographer with research interests centered around utilizing molecular biological and genomic approaches to describe the diversity of life and understand the evolutionary history, ecological roles, and physiological capacity and capabilities of free-living and symbiotic microorganisms, including several that are considered to be at the extremes of where life exists. Dr. Murray’s research has taken her and members of her research group to the Antarctic Peninsula and Northwestern Weddell Sea and the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, the North Slope of Alaska and coastal Arctic, deep sea hydrothermal vents of the East Pacific Rise, and Yellowstone National Park to study the microorganisms inhabiting these diverse and extreme ecosystems. Much of her work has been dedicated to developing environmental genomics technologies for detecting and studying organisms sampled directly from the environment. She earned a Ph.D. in ecology, evolution, and marine biology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Eric Rignot is the Donald Bren Professor of Earth System Science in the Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, and a Senior Research Scientist and Faculty Part Time at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. His research focuses on glaciology, physical oceanography, synthetic-aperture radar remote sensing, radio echo sounding, ocean robotics, and ice sheet numerical modeling. He studies ice sheet mass balance and ice-ocean interaction in Greenland and Antarctica and their impact on past, current and future rates of sea level rise. Dr. Rignot is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of AGU and AAAS. He holds an M.S. in astronomy and astrophysics from University Paris VI, a double M.S. in aerospace engineering and electrical engineering from the University of Southern California (USC), and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from USC.

Amelia Shevenell is an associate professor in the College of Marine Science at the University of South Florida (USF). Dr. Shevenell’s research focuses on generating high-resolution geochemical records from marine sediments to address questions related to Earth’s Cenozoic climate evolution. Her current research addresses Cenozoic Antarctic ice sheet development from far-field and ice-proximal records, the role of the high-latitude oceans in glacial–interglacial carbon cycling, and Antarctic Holocene climate variability. Dr. Shevenell is actively involved in several international research programs, including the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program and Antarctic Geologic Drilling. She received the USF Faculty Outstanding Research Achievement Award in 2019. Dr. Shevenell earned her B.A. in geological sciences with honors from Hamilton College and her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in marine science from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the University College London.

Helio Takai is the interim dean at the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the Pratt Institute. He is also currently a collaborating scientist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Before joining the Pratt Institute, he was a physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory for 29 years. Dr. Takai’s field of research is experimental physics with expertise in nuclear and elementary particle physics. Interests in basic sciences and instrumentation development have led him to develop instrumentation for the realization of experiments for accelerator-based research ranging from electrostatic accelerators to the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. He has also designed and implemented cryogenic elementary particle detectors, signal conditioning electronics, and field-programmable gate array signal processing platforms. In his work with cosmic rays, he is particularly interested in the influence of atmospheric effects on the flux of atmospheric muons. In addition, he has developed instrumentation for radiation detection, data acquisition systems, and analysis software. Dr. Takai holds a B.S. in physics, an M.S. in nuclear physics from the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, and a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.

Terry Wilson is a professor emerita in the School of Earth Sciences and a senior research scientist in the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at The Ohio State University. Her expertise includes Antarctic geology, structure/tectonics, and geodetic measurement of crustal deformation. Dr. Wilson has led large, international efforts, such as the Polar Earth Observing Network (POLENET), to investigate the interactions between the solid earth and the cryosphere in Antarctica. Her ongoing research addresses neotectonic rifting in Antarctica; ice mass balance, ice load history, and glacial rebound patterns; and the contemporary crustal stress field in Antarctica. She has conducted deep-field research in Antarctica for 24 seasons. Dr. Wilson served as the U.S. delegate to the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) for many years, and as the vice president for SCAR from 2014 to 2018. She received the SCAR Medal for International Coordination in 2018. Dr. Wilson received her B.S. in geology from the University of Michigan and Ph.D. in geology from Columbia University.

Eric W. Wolff is the Royal Society Research Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Cambridge University. His research focuses on using ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica to understand the dynamics of glacial cycles and millennial-scale climate change. He also carries out research into the chemistry of the lower parts of the Antarctic atmosphere. Dr. Wolff has received multiple awards for his research, including the Lyell Medal from the Geological Society, and the Louis Agassiz Medal from the European Geosciences Union. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, an Honorary Fellow of the British Antarctic Survey, and a founding chief editor of the journal Climate of the Past. He led the Royal Society team in a joint initiative with the National Academy of Sciences on explaining climate science, Climate Change: Evidence and Causes, in 2013.

STAFF

Stephanie E. Johnson, study director, is a senior program officer with the Water Science and Technology Board. Since joining the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2002, she has worked on a wide range of water-related studies, on topics such as desalination, wastewater reuse, contaminant source remediation, coal and uranium mining, coastal risk reduction, and ecosystem restoration. Dr. Johnson received her B.A. from Vanderbilt University in chemistry and geology and her M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia.

Laurie Geller is the program director for the Polar Research Board. Dr. Geller manages National Academies’ studies, workshops, and other activities in areas related to climate change, weather forecasting, air quality, polar science, resilience, and sustainable development. She received her B.S. in chemistry and environmental studies from Washington University in St. Louis and Ph.D. in atmospheric chemistry from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Steven M. Moss is a program officer at the National Academies for the Board on Life Sciences. His current work includes projects related to the convergence of scientific disciplines, as well as projects on the bioeconomy, synthetic biology, and the future of biotechnology. Prior to joining the National Academies, Dr. Moss received his Ph.D. in chemistry and chemical biology from the University of California, San Francisco. Before starting his Ph.D., he received a B.S. in biochemistry from American University and then worked as a laboratory technician for 2 years at the National Institutes of Health.

Calla Rosenfeld is a senior program assistant with the Water Science and Technology Board and the Board on Earth Resources. She received her B.A. in environmental policy from Middlebury College.