Reflection on 2021 from UKPN
A little later in the year than we initially planned, but we would still like to take a moment to record and share with you the highlights of all the UKPN activities in 2021. Granted, 2021 may have only been mildly better than 2020 in many respects, and we’ve still had to organise the majority of our events virtually, but we’ll present a few UK Polar Network related highlights here and let you decide for yourself. Stay tuned for our recent updates and future opportunities on our social media pages!
First of all, a new UKPN committee has been formed for the 2021/2022 academic year, and with 40 early career volunteers from across the UK, this is the largest committee in UKPN history! Because new committees can only be successful thanks to the work of past committees, we had our first President symposium in October 2021, in which we brought together committee representatives from more than 10 years of UKPN history (2008-2021) to exchange knowledge and ideas for future directions.
As always, the 2021 Antarctic flags project was very popular: 180 flags were submitted by schools from 9 different countries including Poland, Portugal, Hong Kong and Uganda! To date, 40 flags have been received back from teams who have taken them to Antarctica and more will follow as the Antarctic Summer season progresses. The flags taken down by the RRS Sir David Attenborough even included a fantastic letter from the crew members to the schools.
The Polar Pen Pals project allows students to send letters with questions to polar researchers on subjects that they are currently studying, such as meteorology, zoology and glaciology. So far, 30 schools have signed up, and 6 requests for Skype or in person conferences have been received.
The 2021 Polar Pride day was a huge success – and an absolute 2021 UKPN highlight! Social media posts about polar pride day reached an audience of 35.7 million people in 70 countries and 14 published news items mentioning Polar Pride reached about 15.7 million people.
The UKPN also organised three online Polar Pint of Science shows in collaboration with the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust (UKAHT) and Pint of Science. The shows ran over three weeks in October in the run-up to COP26 and all three shows had well over 100 live viewers and a total of 2000 views on Youtube. The episodes (Exploration Untold, The Polar Connection: linking past to future, A roadmap for the future: empowering the globe to save the poles) are still available on Youtube, so do have a look!
In collaboration with the National Maritime Museum (NMM) we organised workshops and activities during the Ice Worlds festival in October 2021. Thanks to the excellent work of our 8 ECR volunteers, the workshops such as “make your own polar animal”, “build a glacier”, “polar foodwebs” and “where did the Titanic sink?” received visitors who even returned to the NMM within the 4-day period to attend the workshops for a second time! Sorry you missed it? We will be collaborating with the NMM on other outreach events in the future!
Three webinars were hosted by the Arctic Sciences Priorities (ASPP) UK-Russia early-career researchers’ collaborations for future sustainability in 2021 and 4 more webinars will follow in 2022. Each webinar is live, and involves a discussion (in both English and Russian) and/or presentations on the various challenges faced by UK-Russia scientific collaborations and how to tackle them. You can re-view past webinars on Youtube: Collaborations matter: a webinar on UK-Russia collaborations in Arctic Science, Starting points: funding and networks, You-me understand: how to overcome cultural and language barriers. Or sign up for future webinars through our mailing list and the UK-Russia collaboration website.
The UKPN has also co-organised and attended a number of conferences in 2021 including:
- the Polar Early Career Conference in May 2021, which was led entirely by ECRs, involved 400 attendees and over 100 presentations and included sessions on various Polar science disciplines, as well as employability workshops, and EDI session, and panels on local knowledge exchange and the impacts of COVID and Brexit on research (which resulted in a Nature article – see also our blogpost on this).
- The ATOM Science Festival in Oxford, with digital activities, quizzes and QR codes which linked to videos on polar research to accompany a treasure hunt around Oxford.
- In addition to this, talks which were given, posters presented and workshops co-organised at the Virtual Early Career Ocean Professionals Day 2021, the 2021 Arctic Circle Assembly and the Svalbard Science Forum.
The UKPN organised an online visual design course for early career scientists. During the one-day course which was given by Infohackit, 24 ECRs learned essential design skills for making science infographics. Hopefully in 2022 we will be able to organise more training courses for our members!
Some other important 2021 highlights included the renovation of our website – doesn’t it look amazing now? - increased collaboration with the newly formed APECS Iceland committee, and support from our EDI officers to various Polar Science networks and activities.
With that, we would like to give a huge applause to our 2020-2021 committee members and the numerous early career scientist volunteers from the UKPN network who have made all of this possible. And we look forward to an equally exciting 2022: note down the Cardiff Science Festival (19 & 20 February) and the Cheltenham Science Festival (June 10th) in your agenda’s, and watch this space (or our newsletter and social media accounts) for more to come!
Polar Horizons 2021 - apply by 25th January!
It's time for the next Polar Horizons! The team over there sent us the following to share with our members:
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The Polar Horizons 2021 scheme aims to bring more diversity to UK Polar Science.
The Diversity in Polar Science Initiative is running the successful Polar Horizons program again in 2021. In 2020 we reached out to UK students from underrepresented groups including, BAME, LGBTQ+ and Disabled students, to show them how fantastic UK polar research, engineering, and operations are and why they should be looking poleward in their future career.
In March 2021 we are doing it all again and this year the scheme is moving fully online, opening it up to the entire UK polar research community.
We invite early career researchers & students in STEM subjects from groups currently underrepresented in Polar Research (including BAME, LGBTQ+ & Disability) to be paired with Arctic & Antarctic scientists and engineers and join us for our program. If you are available in office hours, between the 2nd and 5th of March 2021 and want to learn about Polar Research, please apply here.
We have organised a four-day programme where we will introduce students to polar research through presentations, workshops, and conversations with individually selected and matched virtual hosts who are currently working on polar subjects!
If you have any questions, please find more information here on the British Antarctic Survey website.
https://www.bas.ac.uk/project/diversity-in-uk-polar-science-initiative/uk-polar-horizons-2021/
If you are BAME/BIPOC, LGBTQ+ or have a disability and are interested in Polar science, engineering, technology (including AI), maths, policy, museum studies or operations in the polar regions, please apply here.
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Arctic sessions of MaresEdu conference 30 October
Join us next week at thr Marine Research and Education conference (online) that has a strong Arctic focus this year, see the sessions details below:
- Special session on the UN Decade of Ocean Science with a focus on the Arctic region
The session will feature guest presentations from Dr. Grigorii G. Akhmanov (UNESCO-MSU), Dr. Vladimir Ryabinin (IOC-UNESCO Executive Secretary), Dr. Sandy Starkweather (Sustaining Arctic Observing Networks), Christian Riisager-Simonsen (Danish Centre for Marine Research), and Evgeniia Kostianaia (Center for Coordination of Ocean Research, P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology), followed by the group discussions focusing on one of the seven key societal outcomes of the Decade and their implementation in a context of the Arctic region.
For more details please visit https://globalsessions2020.maresedu.com/un_decade_of_ocean_science
Event registration form: https://forms.gle/ZHnJFD6E5QSQxdnMA

2. UK-Russia joint session on marine expeditions in the Arctic
Understanding Marine Biology and Biogeochemistry of the Changing Arctic Ocean: CAO and Russian Arctic marine research programmes. This session will discuss on-going projects in the Arctic such as the UK/Germany Changing Arctic Ocean Programme (CAO) and comparable Russian marine research programmes to provide a platform for improving UK-Russia bilateral science cooperation. There is also an opportunity to present an e-poster to highlight your own Arctic research as a part of this session.Registration form: https://forms.gle/KivdXkojhLFdGpbS8

Locked into ice: my scientific journey across the Arctic (live-link session 23 October)
Another exciting ooportunity below – the MOSAiC live-link session is scheduled for 23 October (17:00-18:00 UK time)
What does it feel like to be locked in ice, drifting across the Central Arctic Ocean in the middle of the polar night? Why is it both fascinating and challenging to do scientific research from a frozen ice-breaker? How do you build an ice camp on a moving Arctic floe? What mysteries does the Central Arctic Ocean hold, and in what way are Arctic researchers helping to solve them?
Join us for a live-link with Dr. Markus Frey from British Antarctic Survey who has just returned from the MOSAiC expediton, the largest year-round multinational expedition in the Central Arctic Ocean. Get an insider view into the life and work of an Arctic researcher.
Direct link for the English-speaking audiences: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85010418004?pwd=T3NZNStCL0doNlRKcU5vdjU3dzNCQT09
Webinar alert! UK-Russia Arctic Science Links webinar with Tomsk State University (22 October)
On 22 October, 10-11:15am UK time, SIN Russia and the NERC Arctic Office are organising a UK-Russia Arctic Science Links webinar jointly with Tomsk State University “A journey along the Siberian mega-transect: Discovering Tomsk State University and environmental research“. This is a unique opportunity to hear directly from Russian researchers on their ongoing and future scientific projects linked to Arctic research and climate change as well as learn more about their research infrastructure and explore potential for joint work.
From environmental monitoring in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions to Siberian rock glaciers to research into the Northern Hemisphere’s largest swamp system (the Great Vasyugan Mire) – Tomsk State University covers it all and much more! We will take you on an exciting journey to discover the University’s BioClimLand multidisciplinary research centre, environmental research across Siberia’s mega-transect and opportunities for fieldwork and networking across Siberia through the Siberian Change Network (SecNet).
For more details on the webinar, including registration, please visit https://www.arctic.ac.uk/news/a-journey-along-the-siberian-mega-transect/.
UKPN May Polar Origami Challenge
Hello friends,
We hope you are all doing well in these challenging times. Since we can’t visit the poles to see the wildlife in its natural habitat at the moment, we thought we’d bring polar animals to you!
Introducing our polar-themed Origami Challenge! Over the next month we want to see your best origami art, so tag us in your photos and videos of your polar origami animals and put a #PolarOrigamiChallenge.
Each week our committee members will also be uploading their attempts and links to instructions to help you with your projects. We will be posting some of the best on our social media for all to see! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter (@UKPolarNetwork) and Instagram (@ukpolarnetwork) for further updates.
Remember - we will only repost things that live in polar environments. Happy crafting everyone!
Here you can see a beautiful origami penguin and krill by one of our VPs, Dr. Anna Belcher!
If you’d like to make these for yourself, follow the links below for tutorials:
- Penguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml7-huWUejw
- Krill: http://www.antarctica.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/213991/Origami-x4.pdf
#PolarOrigamiChallenge #UKPNOrigami #OrigamiChallenge #PolarOutreach