I got thrown right into a big conference called Polar Night Week arranged by SIOS the first week of my internship. Every day there were talks and workshops where I got insight into the different research groups and working groups within SIOS. At the start it was quite overwhelming with a lot of new information, but at the end of the week I had a much wider understanding of what SIOS actually does. I found it quite hard to get my head around what work SIOS actually is doing just from reading on their website, but the conference helped me see the importance of coordinating and facilitating research in the arctic, which is the goal of SIOS. I also got to meet many researchers taking part in this conference, with interesting research projects all over Svalbard within different fields of environmental earth science. They had many good stories to tell from all sorts of field work.
During this first work period I have had introduction talks with most personell working at SIOS Knowledge Centre to learn about all the different work tasks they have. I am excited to get the chance to work a little with each of them, to try out different tasks and get lots of new experience.
The last period I have mainly worked with planning a workshop taking place in Copenhagen in the start of March. This workshop will be about a big report just published by SIOS called SESS report 2018. In this report one gets insight into the research done in collaboration with SIOS the last years, within different fields of research on Svalbard, for example permafrost, snow and plankton. I have taken part in planning the content of this workshop, which will be discussing the content of this report and future aspects for next year’s report. I have also been responsible for the logistics with participant registration and hotel booking. I think planning a big event like this will be a good experience to bring into future jobs.
Right now, I am working with making an overview over existing infrastructure facilities on Svalbard and data recorded from them. This information will be available for all SIOS members at the SIOS website. This way, researchers can find already existing research infrastructure that possibly can be expanded to also measure the new wanted variable. Alternatively, researchers can use this website to search for variables already measured at these infrastructures, to see if the wanted variable, for example temperature, already is being measured in the area were the field study will take place.
