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PolarRES Early Career Researcher Bootcamp 2025

27 February 2025

Starting the year at full speed!

PolarRES Early Career Researchers gathered last week (16-21 February 2025) in List (Sylt), Germany for the third and final ECR Bootcamp of the project. This time, PolarRES members were hosted at the AWI guest house and worked at the AWI Research Station in Sylt, which provided the perfect setup for a week of hard work and collaboration inspired by the sunny days by the sea.

PolarRES researchers at the ECR Bootcamp 2025 in List (Sylt), Germany.

With the final months of the project ahead of us, the ten ECR participants aimed to create long-lasting communication and dissemination materials to be used during the project’s time-frame and beyond. To kick off this work, PolarRES communication & dissemination colleagues joined online to provide guidance on the soon-to-be launched PolarRES in Practice stories and the “Polar (exchange) explorer”. Throughout the week, the ECRs worked on developing this content and created five PolarRES in Practice stories:

  • Rain in Antartica (Ella and Abraham)
  • Ocean acidification in the Southern Ocean (Lucia, Chiara and Cecilia)
  • Surface Mass Balance (Marte and Kristiina)
  • Antarctic Sea Ice (Ella and Kristiina)
  • PolarRES Model overview (Jan and Raphael)

Stay in touch for more updates on this!

Planning the PolarRES in practice stories.

In addition to creating dissemination material, the participants used the daily writing sessions to work, either individually or in small groups, on advancing their own project tasks. This work ranged from drafting manuscripts together to finalising details before submitting a paper and addressing reviewers’ comments. Overall, with the advantage of having the main collaborators closeby, this was the perfect setting to speed up the work!

As on previous occasions, the PolarRES Bootcamp 2025 served as a platform for advancing PolarRES science in a collaborative way. However, it was also a success in terms of networking and learning. This time, participants had the opportunity to board the research vessel Mya II, where they learned about fieldwork and the local marine ecology. A guided tour of the AWI Research Station in Sylt gave the PolarRES ECRs further overview of the research efforts in the region. They visited laboratories and mesocosm infrastructure, learned about the effects of climate change on fish from climate chamber studies, and even learned about the troublesome task of keeping a pool full of starfish alive!

Onboard of Research Vessel Mya II (AWI).

The evenings took on a more relaxed vibe, but networking activities continued. In a Pint of Science-style, Marte, a PolarRES ECR from Utrecht University, shared her ‘Field and art impressions’ from her fieldwork in Antarctica. On a very chilly night, Kriistina Verro from DMI, a trained astrophysicist and planetarium guide, taught everyone about the night sky.

Marte Hofsteenge at AWI guest house presenting ’Field and art impressions of the McMurdo Valley’.

Happy and proud of a successful week, PolarRES ECRs said goodbye, looking to the future, looking forward to meet again and commited to continuing shaping polar research.