PhD student Louise Borthwick is in Antarctica!

Louise left Philadelphia on October 31st and is now at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. She is part of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration‘s GHOST team that will traverse across Thwaites Glacier and collect geophysical data to reveal subglacial geology that controls the ice dynamics. Louise will spend the next ~2-3 weeks at McMurdo Station to go through trainings and prepare all the equipment, food, camping gear etc to go on the 30-day traverse.

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Looking for a PhD and a master’s student to join our group in Fall 2023!

PhD positon

We seek a PhD student to join our research group, starting in Fall 2023. The student will work on an NSF-funded project for establishing a method to derive the subglacial effective pressure from reflection-seismic data and map its spatial/temporal variability under West Antarctic ice streams (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2048324&HistoricalAwards=false). This is a collaborative project with a group at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, led by Dr. Luke Zoet, who will conduct lab experiments. The student will lead the Temple University contribution to apply the lab results to field data. The student will also work on improving the characterization of subglacial topography and ice-bed interface conditions using seismic waveform-inversion techniques.

An ideal candidate will have a Master’s degree in geophysics or related field, experience in seismology (active or passive source) and be proficient in scientific computing using Python or Matlab. However, an outstanding candidate with an undergraduate degree in geoscience, physics or applied math will also be considered.

This PhD position will be fully funded for four academic years with combined RA through the NSF-funded project and TA support provided by the department.

Master’s position

We seek a master’s student to join our research group, starting in Fall 2023. There is a variety of possible research topics for this position, ranging from remote-sensing analyses of glacier-sea ice interactions in West Antarctica to investigation of sub-ice-shelf bathymetry and geological structures using geophysical techniques (active-source seismic and gravity-anomaly). 

An ideal candidate will have a bachelor’s degree in geology, geophysics, environmental science or a related field. Some experience in scientific computing is not required but preferable. 

This master’s position will be fully funded for two academic years with a combination of teaching and research assistantships.

Application deadline for both of the above positions is January 15, 2023 for Fall 2023 start. But for priority considerations, please email your CV and a statement of interest to amuto(at)temple.edu as soon as possible.

We will participate in one of the largest scientific projects in Antarctica!

Our research group will participate in the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, the largest scientific project in Antarctica staged jointly by the US and the UK that was officially launched on on April 30, 2018. The ITGC will comprehensively study Thwaites Glacier and its surroundings in West Antarctica to gather data needed to reduce uncertainties in the estimate of the future global sea-level rise.

There are eight separate projects in the ITGC, and our group is part of TARSAN and GHOST. TARSAN will study ice-ocean interactions in front of Thwaites Glacier, and GHOST will reveal the subglacial geology beneath Thwaites Glacier. Temple university, funded by NSF, will contribute to both of these projects by providing geophysical measurements using active-source seismic and gravity techniques.

Read and watch a video about the ITGC here.

 

Read some news articles on the ITGC:

NSF news release

Washington Post

BBC News

Science