Planning Safe and Effective Field Campaigns
Join us online for a panel discussion on ‘Planning Safe and Effective Field Campaigns’ on Wednesday, March 11, 2026, 10am AKT | 12pm MT | 2pm ET!
Planning a polar field season can feel exhilarating — and overwhelming. Join PSECCO and the NSF Ice-Shelf Rumpling Project for a 1.5‑hour panel designed specifically for early‑career researchers preparing for fieldwork in the Arctic or Antarctic.
This conversation brings together experienced field scientists to dig into what actually makes a field campaign run smoothly. Panelists will discuss essential pre‑field training, how to build clear communication structures within your team, and strategies for responding when plans inevitably shift in extreme environments or unforeseen challenges arise.
Participants will walk away with practical tools for preparing before deployment, guidance for navigating challenges in the field, and resources you can use to strengthen your next field campaign — whether it’s your first or your fifteenth.
To register for this event, visit this webpage.
About the panelists
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Alison Banwell holds dual appointments as a Research Scientist III in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder, and as a Professor in the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) at Northumbria University, UK. She is a glaciologist whose research focuses on monitoring and quantifying Antarctic and Greenland ice-sheet and ice-shelf melt, hydrology and dynamics using satellite remote-sensing and field observations. Ali is PI and field lead of the NSF Rumples Project, bringing particular expertise in GNSS, automatic weather stations, and time-lapse photography. This project marked her seventh Antarctic deployment (sixth as field lead), and she has also conducted glaciological fieldwork in Greenland, Svalbard, the Himalayas, and the European Alps.
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Ryan Cassotto is an Assistant Research Professor in the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine and a Research Scientist in CIRES at the University of Colorado. A glaciologist by training, he uses remote sensing observations to study near-surface geophysical changes due to glacial flow, permafrost degradation, plate tectonics, wildfires, landslide motion and slope instabilities. He is a Co-PI on the NSF Rumples Project where he led the TRI measurement campaign, assisting with the GPR and ApRES measurements, and compiling satellite-based data to complement our ground measurements in McMurdo. The Rumples project was Ryan’s first trip to Antarctica; however, he has conducted several field campaigns in Greenland and Alaska over the last 16 years.
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Maya Thomas (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate and NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, William & Mary in Virginia, USA. For her marine science degree, she is studying how climate change affects zooplankton-mediated biogeochemical cycling in the West Antarctic Peninsula. In total, she has completed four field seasons in the Antarctic with over a year spent “on ice” as a member of the Palmer, Antarctica Long-term Ecological Research program. This included both ship- and station-based fieldwork on the ARSV Laurence M. Gould, R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer, and at Palmer Station, Antarctica. Prior to her Ph.D., Maya received her B.S. in marine biology from Nova Southeastern University in Florida.
FAQ for virtual PSECCO-hosted events
All participants are expected to follow PSECCO’s community guidelines throughout the entirety of the event.
We highly encourage participants to have a working camera that is on during events, as it allows for better engagement. However, a camera is not a requirement to attend PSECCO events unless otherwise stated in the event description.
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