Melody Brown Burkins, Guarini '95, '98, the associate director for programs and research at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, has been named director of the Institute of Arctic Studies. Burkins begins her new role on July 1, as Ross Virginia, the Myers Family Professor of Environmental Studies, passes the helm of the internationally renowned program to his longtime student, colleague, and friend.

In the 1970s, hunters stumbled upon eight 500-year-old bodies preserved by the Arctic climate near Qilakitsoq, an abandoned Inuit settlement in northwest Greenland. Later, when scientists photographed the mummies with infrared film, they made an intriguing discovery: Five of the six females had delicate lines, dots and arches tattooed on their faces.

With Siberian heatwaves, rapidly declining ice and a warming trend that is three times the rate of the rest of the globe, the Arctic is feeling the brunt of climate change as much as any region on Earth. One glimmer of hope is what's known as the "Last Ice Area," a region where summer sea ice is expected to survive the longest and therefore act as a refuge for the wildlife that depends on it. But new research shows that even this bastion of hope is under threat.

The Government of Nunavut is hosting a leadership forum in August to build capacity among Nunavummiut women. The GN’s department of Family Services is hosting the four-day event with funding provided through the federal government’s Women and Gender Equality Canada department. The forum aims to empower Nunavut’s women and girls using traditional knowledge, skills, and their roles as natural leaders.

The annual Arctic Circle Assembly is the largest annual international gathering on the Arctic, attended by more than 2000 participants from 60 countries. It is attended by heads of states and governments, ministers, members of parliaments, officials, experts, scientists, entrepreneurs, business leaders, indigenous representatives, environmentalists, students, activists and others from the growing international community of partners and participants interested in the future of the Arctic. 

For the first time, a Regional Conference on Permafrost will be combined with the bi-annual 19th International Conference on Cold Regions Engineering. This conference is hosted by the US Permafrost Association, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the International Permafrost Association, the Permafrost Young Researchers Network, and the University of Colorado Boulder. A complete list of planned sessions is available here.

The National Academies’ Polar Research Board is convening the following session at the Fall AGU meeting (Dec. 2021), and we welcome proposals for presentations in this session.  Abstract submission deadline is August 4, 2021.  Submissions to this session can be made at: AGU Fall Meeting 2021 (confex.com), and general submission instructions at: Abstracts | AGU Fall Meeting 2021.

Organizers announce, that due to the coronavirus outbreak, the 2nd Symposium on Polar Microbes and Viruses has been postponed to 2022. This symposium will bring together molecular microbial ecologists specializing in different organism groups to share our latest results and discuss methodological problems, as well as future prospects in the field, including practical international collaborations. The environmental focus will be on cryospheric environments including sea ice, glaciers, ice sheets, and permafrost, but excellent research in other polar environments is also invited. The methods to be discussed will focus on 'omics' techniques, ranging from single cells to metagenomes, but research using additional methods is encouraged as well.