Anders Foltz
BA, Anthropology and Spanish
Inuit Circumpolar Council-Alaska
This summer, I had the incredible opportunity to intern with the Inuit Circumpolar Council in Anchorage, Alaska. This internship helped further my academic goals and enhanced my understanding of Inuit culture and way of life. My central project was focused on creating a dataset that outlined the important priorities in 10 Arctic nations’ Arctic Policies, specifically focusing on the valuation of Indigenous Knowledge. This involved thoroughly combing through each country’s publicly available Arctic policy and making note of the context, tone, and frequency of language that prioritizes or diminishes different goals, such as resource extraction, sustainable development, and military activity. Then, I combined these findings into one document which gave a score of low, moderate, or high for how much emphasis is placed on each category. For the sake of ICC, the inclusion of the value of Indigenous Knowledge is the most important aspect, as the way different countries refer to and interact with Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic is crucial to their well-being. This project was useful to ICC not only for the data it provided but also for the format, as before there did not exist a referential overview of this type.
Apart from the project I worked on, I also gained invaluable experience and knowledge about who Inuit people are. As a student studying cultural anthropology, the knowledge I gained aligns well with my academic career and interest in exploring other cultures. Alaska was a place I had never before visited, and I am incredibly grateful to have learned about what it’s like to live there. I was able to have in-depth discussions each day with my coworkers about their lives and what it means to be Inuit. I learned about what issues are faced by Inuit communities at the local, national, and global scale. Most importantly, I was able to collaborate with ICC and bring a valuable perspective to the organization by assisting with a project that will benefit them in preparations for international negotiations.
I’d like to extend my thanks to the Arctic Fellowship Fund and the Program in International and Comparative Studies for their support throughout the internship. Special thanks to the donors who provided financial support; I wouldn’t have been able to have this experience otherwise. Also, I appreciate the ICC office in Anchorage for their hospitality and their willingness to share their stories, culture, and food! The lessons I learned, the people I met, and the work I conducted will stick with me throughout my life.
Chadwin Ng
BS, Chemistry and English
Pratt Lab
Thanks to the Arctic Internship Fellowship for Spring/Summer 2023, I was able to produce fruitful research experiences under the mentorship of Dr. Jessica Mirrielees and Dr. Kerri Pratt. With their guidance, I was able to continue my two-year-long research that focuses on characterizing individual sea spray aerosol particles from the Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition and further elevate the comprehensive analysis of how chemical composition affects the morphology of salt in the Arctic atmosphere. As such, I would love to give a wholehearted thank you to the Arctic Fellowship Fund and the Program in International and Comparative Studies for supporting my efforts in my studies in the States; I was once again able to contribute vital work in order to prove to the scientific community that the Pratt Lab’s research holds substance and significance within environmental and analytical chemistry.
Besides work in the lab, I was also ecstatic to be able to present my research at the 20th annual Michigan Geophysical Union Student Symposium. With enough time provided by the fellowship funding, I was able to experience an event led by the EARTH and ClaSp departments that encouraged graduate and undergraduate students to flourish and share their research on campus. Instead of agonizing over whether or not I could stay in the US over the summer, it was astonishing to dip my toes into an event organized by graduate students, one that provided a safe space for connecting with other scientific minds across the University and learning more about how our science is interconnected with each other. This proved to be a great chance for me to compile all the work that I had completed before the summer to produce a framework of future work to continue as well as present it to a general chemistry audience. I learned a lot through the process of creating said and receiving critical feedback and constructive advice from several undergraduate, graduate students, and professors who judged posters.
During my time in the summer, I was able to strengthen my confidence and knowledge regarding the impact of aerosols across the wider world. Sea spray aerosols (SSA) take a huge part in controlling the chemistry of the Earth’s climate through scattering solar radiation and forming cloud droplets, which can take the shape of sea salt particles, organic particles, and anything else in the ocean that can be transferred into the aerosol particle phase. On the surface of the ocean, SSA are produced via wave breaking and bubble bursting processes at the air-sea interference. While within Arctic ice, they are produced from leads by wind driven processes. With the fact that the Arctic is warming faster than any other region on Earth, it puts great emphasis on how studies on Arctic SSA are limited, and even fewer explore single-particle morphology and composition of SSA. Hence, my studies with the comprehensive characterization of individual Arctic SSA particles is crucial for further predictions on the radiative forcing.
The research that I conducted in the summer particularly emphasizes on filling these gaps of Arctic data by investigating the elemental composition and morphology within individual particles of sea salt (a major component of SSA). Atmospheric particles were sampled using the Davis Rotating-drum Unit for Monitoring (DRUM) instrument from September 2019 to October 2020 during the MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) expedition. Afterwards, individual particles from three storm periods were then analyzed using energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to determine their elemental composition. Eventually, an image processing program (ImageJ) was used to analyze trends in the uniformity and projected area diameter of sea salt particles. This allows us to get both a high resolution picture of each individual salt particle along with information on its chemical makeup at the same time, which in turn gives us the opportunity to seek trends between the ratios of each element to the type of shape the salt takes. This was crucial as we had to look through thousands and thousands of individual samples of salt particles produced through MOSAiC’s year long expedition, and as such without the Arctic Internship, our data analysis could not have been completed much faster. Hence, we were able to tackle the question of how single particle microspectroscopy can be utilized to differentiate between Sea Spray and Blowing Snow aerosol; We noted how sea spray aerosol dominates the sea salt aerosol population by number, and saw that certain salt shapes differ in morphology compared to sea spray aerosol observed globally.
These opportunities were able to greatly enrich my studies in Chemistry, specifically with my distinct interest within analytical chemistry and the many techniques and instruments the industry offers to young aspiring chemists such as myself. Though I don’t plan to further my education in graduate school, working with the Pratt Lab this summer taught me what it’s like to pursue a scientific career full time. I found unexpected joy through managing life in the States as an international student: making decisions to prioritize certain workloads and measurements, and making sure things get done on time while figuring out my life goals on my own. I’m quite hopeful on all the organizational skills I picked up by the end of the summer, and look forward to implementing them into my life back in Hong Kong. Furthermore, I was given multiple opportunities to ask questions and consult experts within Chemistry, which I wasn’t able to seek out with the regular 3 hrs a week I got in the lab during the school semester.
In summation, I would like to give a sincere thanks to the Program in International and Comparative Studies and the Arctic Internship Fellowship donors for investing in the growth of my scientific studies - evolving throughout this summer both as a scientist and as an international student. I also want to wholeheartedly shoutout both Dr. Pratt and Dr. Mirrielees for their wondrous guidance and mentorship throughout the summer and the many years before, along with their endless support as I continue to work with them and the rest of the Pratt group together.
