AMP’D blog #2: Meet the team!

The AMP’D field team comprises microbiologists, biogeochemists, geophysicists and modellers, with expertise in a wide range of environments from glaciers and permafrost to the deep subsurface, coral reefs, and hot springs! Excitingly, this will be the first time that many of us will be working in the field together (and even the first time meeting each other for some!).

The AMP’D field team is:​

​Karen Lloyd, AMP’D Lead PI
​Karen is an Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville USA. She studies deep subsurface microbes “in the wild” and tries to determine what they’re doing out there that’s helpful for Earth processes. Coming from an oceanography background, this is only her second project in permafrost, so she is excited to see whether microbes have similar strategies for surviving in oceanic vs. terrestrial energy-starved environments.  
Twitter: @archaearama

Tatiana Vishnivetskaya, AMP’D Co-PI.
Tatiana is a Research Assistant Professor in the Center for Environmental Biotechnology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville USA. She is fascinated in uncovering microbial biodiversity in deep subsurface permafrost, and other extreme environments. Her interests lay in understanding how microbial community changes during environmental change. She also wants to know what makes the microbial genus ubiquitous enabling it to occupy different habitats. In her research, she applies a variety of classical microbiological and next-generation high-throughput techniques. In collaboration with Russian colleagues (IPBPSS, Andrey Abramov) she created YouTube videos to extend public knowledge on Siberian permafrost area and research ongoing there. 
Twitter: @tvishniv

Brianna Green
​Brianna is a Master's student at University of Tennessee Knoxville, working under Dr. Andrew Steen. Her research experience throughout undergrad would be described as interdisciplinary. From assessing Uranium concentration in water in soils, analyzing oceanographic data, and culturing Cave and Hot Spring Sulfur-bacteria, she has built a research interest in biogeochemistry. Having done fieldwork in hot springs, on a hot summer day in August, she knows Svalbard will be MUCH different. This will be her first time in Svalbard and first time going outside of the United States. While daunting, she is looking forward to the adventure as well as the opportunity to meet others in the scientific community and gain more field work experience!
Twitter: @Geo_BRIology

​Sayali Mulay
Sayali Mulay is a first year PhD student with Dr. Karen Lloyd from University of Tennessee and Dr. Mirea Podar from Oak Ridge National Lab in Knoxville. She got interested in astrobiology after watching the Cosmos series by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. She is fascinated by the ability which the microbes possess to survive the most hostile places on earth and is looking forward to studying these hardy microbes to design better tools to look for signatures of extant or extinct life on other planets.
Twitter: @mulay_sayali

Katie Sipes
Katie is a PhD student with Karen Lloyd at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville USA in the Microbiology department. This will be Katie’s 3rd trip to Ny-Ålesund and the second trip to drill permafrost. In 2018, Katie planned a trip to drill active layer permafrost in Ny Alesund along side another group’s fieldwork. After securing equipment and guidance from a variety of locations and agencies (NSF, U.S Ice Drilling Program, Jon’s Machine Shop, Jonathan Holmgren, Forest Banks, Geoff Miller) Katie executed the drilling plan near the Bayelva permafrost monitoring site. Katie has been studying the permafrost metagenomes, geochemistry and soil enzymes in the Svalbard permafrost for her dissertation. Katie is looking to defend her work within a year and will be ready for the next step. She hopes to continue studying metagenomics  in permafrost/extreme environments in the future.
Twitter: @KatieSipes42

Donato Giovannelli 
Donato is an Assistant Professor at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy and a visiting scholar at the Earth-Life Science Institute, Japan. His main interest is in the co-evolution of Earth and life, and how life influences planetary scale processes. He was recently awarded an ERC Starting Grant to look for the influence of trace elements on the evolution of microbial metabolism. During the AMP'D expedition he will look for carbon export from the melting permafrost to the fjord ecosystem. Get more info on Donato's research group at www.donatogiovannelli.com
Twitter: @d_giovannelli

​Matteo Selci
Matteo is a Ph.D. student with Donato Giovannelli at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy. He is interested in the thriving of life in the subsurface. Especially, he wants to understand the role of subsurface microbial communities in biogeochemical cycles, along the subduction zones. Svalbard expedition is the third field trip for Matteo, after Costa Rica in 2019, and Chile in 2020. After two warm places, he will experience a cold one for the first time. He is very enthusiastic to get there and have the opportunity to study an environment so particular.
Twitter: @matteo_selci

James Bradley
James is a Lecturer (Assistant-Professor) at Queen Mary University of London, UK, and a Humboldt Fellow at the GFZ German Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany. He is fascinated by the interactions between life and its environment – particularly extreme environments! He wants to know if ancient microbes that have been frozen and dormant for thousands of years will ‘wake up’ when Arctic permafrost begins to thaw. James was recently in Svalbard during the long dark Polar Night of 2020/21 studying the winter snowpack, and is excited to go back to Svalbard to witness the return of the sun! 
Twitter: @drbradbrad

Margaret Cramm
Margaret is a PhD student at Queen Mary University of London. She is interested in “misplaced” microorganisms – those found in environments not suitable for their growth – and how these organisms respond to their environment as it changes. She is particularly interested in using dormant organisms to explore life’s history. She has conducted fieldwork in the Canadian Arctic. Her visit to Ny-Ålesund will be a new high latitude record for herself.
twitter: @microbeMAC

Andrey Abramov
Andrey is head of the Soil Cryology department at the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science (IPCBPSS RAS) at the Russian Academy of Sciences. His main field of expertise is aseptic drilling, thermal state of permafrost, searching for the oldest and coldest frozen ground on Earth. He dreams about drilling on Mars one day. His field experience covers the Arctic (Russia and Alaska), Antarctica (6 campaigns, including 2 circumnavigations and one to Dry Valleys) and high mountain areas, preferably of volcanic origin (Kamchatka and Caucasus). His main driving force is gravitation - he likes to include some freeriding or paragliding to the expeditions.
Instagram: @forestpro

Julia Boike
Julia is a Senior Researcher in the Permafrost Section at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Potsdam and Professor for Polar Geography at the Humboldt University of Berlin (Germany). Julia is leading a group of six from AWI, comprised of researchers, engineers, students and one photographer. Our mission is to maintain the long-term observatory site at Bayelva, test some cool new sensors (MOSES), and apply our permafrost thaw protocol (T-MOSAiC). 
Twitter: @AWI_de

​The wider AMP’D project also involves Co-Investigators: Andrew Steen (University of Tennessee), Tullis C Onstott (Princeton University), Robert Hettich (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), and John Cliff (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory).