Ocean Dynamics Beaufort Sea

Gerty Cori Ward grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. Camping was a family tradition, and she spent summers canoe tripping through Algonquin Park in Ontario, Canada. She comes from a family with a strong scientific tradition (her grandparents shared the 1947 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on the biochemistry of carbohydrates), but after graduation from Vassar College with a degree in Economics, she worked in the finance industry. After three years the call of destiny was simply too strong, so she went back to school and earned a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from North Carolina State University. As an adult, after wearing many hats, she became a science teacher to strengthen the connection between scientists in the field and students in the classroom. Ms. Ward now happily teaches middle school science at Durham Academy in Durham, North Carolina. Her classroom motto is, "when in doubt, doubt!" and she hopes to empower her students to look critically at the scientific claims that shape our world.

Rick Krishfield works for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. His scientific expertise includes arctic oceanography and biogeochemistry, air-ice-ocean interactions, and ice flow dynamics and kinematics. Mr. Krishfield has extensive field experience in the Arctic. He hopes that Ms. Ward will bring a fresh viewpoint and help to interest the general public and school children in scientific research.

Andrey Proshutinsky is the Principal Investigator of the Beaufort Gyre Exploration program and a Senior Scientist in WHOI's Physical Oceanography Department. Dr. Proshutinsky has more than 25 years of experience studying the Arctic Seas, and has produced numerous publications concerning regional oceanography and meteorology, climate change, numerical modeling of ice and water dynamics, Arctic Ocean tides and storm surges, and Northern Sea Route climatology and navigation conditions.