Graduate student researchers are the future of science and an integral part of our Geophysical Institute family.
So let’s meet some of them.
Here’s Emily Fedders from the GI’s Snow, Ice and Permafrost Group. Her advisor is research professor Andy Mahoney.
Q: Where are you from? Tell us about that place.
Emily: I grew up in southern West Virginia. It's a beautiful and underrated state with lots of outdoor opportunities and friendly people.
Q: Tell us about your education path. Where were you before coming to UAF? What stage are you at in your graduate program?
Emily: I attended undergrad at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, as a geology major. They offer a “quantitative geoscience” concentration, which included a math minor and several classes within the Geologic and Environmental Sciences Department focused on the application of that math to Earth science problems. Those classes got me interested in geophysics and the cryosphere. I came straight to UAF after undergrad and started as a geophysics master’s student. I converted that work to a Ph.D. program partway through. I'm now a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate hoping to graduate this spring.
Q: Tell us about your general field of research. What do you find interesting about it?
Emily: I study sea ice in the Arctic Ocean or, more specifically, sea ice mechanics and dynamics at intermediate scales, between about 10 meters and 10 kilometers. I find this interesting both because I think of this as a scale that relates well to human interactions with the ice for travel, subsistence or industry, as well as because it's a scale that requires a creative combination of fieldwork and remote sensing to observe thoroughly.
Sea ice isn't a single continuous sheet. It consists of individual continuous plates of ice bounded by fractures. These plates drift with winds and ocean currents, but they also deform internally when they run into each other or the coastline. Capturing both of these processes is important for being able to accurately model ice conditions at these intermediate scales, whether for forecasting or climate modeling. But the internal deformation in particular is difficult to measure using satellite remote sensing techniques, since it involves much smaller displacements than the overall drift of the ice plates themselves. These internal deformations are still important, though, because if they exceed what the ice can sustain without breaking, they cause new fractures to form. Most of my thesis work has focused on expanding our capability to observe these internal deformations using ground-based radar interferometry.
Q: What are you working on now?
Emily: Right now I'm working with ground-based interferometric radar data to observe how past fracture pathways influence future fracture pathways through the ice, as well as how internal deformation is influenced by the geometry of contacts between individual ice plates
Q: Why did you choose UAF?
Emily: I wanted my graduate work to include fieldwork, be based in a place I would enjoy living with plenty of outdoor recreation opportunities, and have an adviser who came well-recommended by former students.
Q: What do you like most about doing research at the UAF Geophysical Institute?
Emily: Academically, I like the community of cryosphere researchers here, as well as the opportunities for guidance from and collaboration with experts in other geophysical fields when my work intersects with their areas of expertise — for example, radar remote sensing or inverse modeling.
Q: What do you do outside of UAF? What would you tell someone about things to do in Fairbanks?
Emily: I do a lot of running, skiing, hiking and biking both on my own and with friends. There are great opportunities for all of these things in Fairbanks and so many trail systems in town and nearby that vary with the season. I also enjoy opportunities to learn and improve my skills and fitness and expand my friend community through things like ski classes out at Birch Hill or community interval workouts at the West Valley High School track during the summer.
Q: What do you hope to be doing when you complete your graduate degree?
Emily: I've enjoyed research and fieldwork and would like to continue in science work but haven't quite settled on what that will look like yet.
