George Tanski(President)

George is a geographer and permafrost scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany. He is currently a PhD student in the Helmholtz Society Young Investigator Group on coastal permafrost (COPER). George is working in the Western Canadian Arctic on Herschel Island and is interested in eroding arctic coasts and the release of permafrost carbon, its degradation, and fate in the sea and the atmosphere. He is PYRN member since 2012 and joined the PYRN ExCom at the EUCOP 2014 in Évora, Portugal.

Alexandre Bevington

Alexandre is currently working on a Master’s thesis in physical geography and permafrost science at the University of Ottawa in Canada. His thesis investigates the landscape controls on climate-permafrost interactions and then uses these controls to predict top of permafrost temperatures throughout the Yukon, Canada. Alex is involved with a number of national and international organization such as APECS and Let’s Talk Science and he is excited to work with PYRN until 2016!

Elin Högström

Elin Högström is a PhD student at Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien). She did her Bachelor degree in Earth Science with focus on Glaciology, and Master’s in Physical Geography with focus on permafrost geomorphology, both at Uppsala University. Her PhD concerns radar satellite retrieval of soil moisture for the purpose of permafrost studies. Her interest is to understand and thus find ways to reduce limitations with the soil moisture retrieval that are specific to the high latitudes. Elin is a representative for the PAGE21 (http://www.page21.eu/) Young Researchers since 2012. She got actively involved with PYRN through organizing the joint PYRN, APECS, ADAPT and PAGE21 workshop during the EUCOP 2014.

Josefine Lenz

Josefine Lenz` PhD project is based at the Department of Periglacial Research at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute Helmholtz-Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Potsdam, Germany. When studying a thermokarst lake development in the western Canadian Arctic for her diploma in Geography she got fascinated by the Arctic vastness and great value of paleoenvironmental archives. Josefine`s dissertation is focused on understanding the Arctic landscape dynamic in Alaska by using particularly drained lake sediment cores. Josefine also hopes to open a new perspective on system earth to her little son, he instead is able to show through his eyes what`s really important in life.

Jens Strauss

Jens Strauss is a PhD student at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Potsdam, Germany. He is working on organic carbon which is freeze-locked in permafrost deposits in Siberia and Alaska.Jens is especially interested in the carbon stored in thaw vulnerable ice-rich permafrost including their reaction to climate change and possible implications for the earth climate system. His research includes permafrost carbon quantity as well as quality using a combined lipid biomarker sedimentological approach. Jens is co-leading PYRN of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (PYRN-DACH) and is PYRN-ExCom member since EUCOP 2014.

Silvie Harder

Silvie is a PhD student in the biogeochemistry and global change group of the department of geography at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Her main research interest is how the thawing of permafrost in the Stordalen mire in Abisko, Sweden affects the hydrology, thermal conditions and vegetation, and how these abiotic and biotic factors alter the magnitude and rate of greenhouse gas exchange.Silvie is also investigating how to scale up from the plant functional type and plant assemblage scale carbon gas exchanges (measured with auto-chamber systems) to what is measured at the whole ecosystem scale (with an eddy covariance system). She is a member of the PYRN ExCom since June, 2014.

Andrea Schneider

Andrea is a PhD student at the Department of Geology at the Arctic University in Tromsø, Norway. She has a bachelor in Geography and Biology from Humboldt University in Berlin/Germany and a master in Physical Geography from Stockholm University in Sweden.During her studies she participated in two expeditions of the Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research to arctic Siberia. On her master thesisAndrea was focusing on dynamics of polygonal ponds. Beside patterned ground and polygon development, she was interested in wildfires in permafrost areas, palaeoglaciology of the Arctic, coastal erosion and subsea permafrost.

Denis Frolov

Denis is a research fellow in the laboratory of avalanches and mudflows at Faculty of Geography, Lomonosov Moscow State University. His research interests include snow cover and climatic spacial and time alterations as well as regularities of snow cover formation and the processes of heat and mass transport in snow cover and on the boundary with ground while ground freezing.Participated in expeditions to Caucasus, New Siberian islands and other parts of Russian Arctic. He is a webmaster of the new PYRN website.

Alexey Maslakov

Alexey Maslakov is a PhD student at Cryolithology and Glaciology Department, Geographical Faculty, Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia). He also has master and bachelor degrees in Geocryology at the same department.Fieldwork area is Chukchi Peninsula and Central Russia. Study interests are coastal dynamics and changes of permafrost conditions in communities of Chukchi Peninsula; seasonal freezing and thawing layer dynamics; permafrost engineering.Alexey was inspired by work of PYRN during TICOP in 2012. Since that time he is active member of PYRN Russia. Alexey is covering the representation of PYRN Russia with great pleasure and would like to organize some PYRN events in Russia.

Elena Kuznetsova

Elena Kuznetsova is a postdoctoral researcher at the Road and Railway group of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. She had the privilege to complete her bachelor/master studies and PhD research at the Department of Geocryology (Faculty of Geology) of the Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russia). Her PhD dissertation was focused on thermal properties and phase composition of water in the frozen volcanic ash and scoria (region – Kamchatka, Far-East of Russia). Since 2012, she has been living and working in Norway, 2012-2013 she was working as a research scientist at the largest independent research organization in Scandinavia, and from 2014 she started her 3-years postdoc in NTNU. She is interested in soil heaving and frost heaving with special application to roads and railroads in cold climate regions. Elena joined the ExCom at EUCOP4 in Evora, Portugal.

William Longo

Will is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University working to reconstruct the climate and ecological history of Northeastern Alaska using sedimentary records from lakes. His research seeks to identify and quantify permafrost degradation in the past using organic geochemical methods and to couple these results to quantitative climate records.

Will received his M.Sc. from Brown University in 2013 and he has been participating in arctic field campaigns based in Alaska since 2007.

Cayetana Recio Blitz

She working on the research team Michelangelo Paul, who is the former representante in Spain of PYRN.Cayetana has studied race Ambeintales Degree in Science from the University of Alcalá de Heneraes and she did a Master in Ecosystem Restoration. Cayetana has experience in managing social, networks vistual newspaper on Environment and organization websites.For PYRN she would like to work with communication and to somehow take care of networking and works with the web management for PYRN.