Blog

From June 5–13, 2026, I was back in Utqiaġvik, Alaska — this time working with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). I’m spending this summer as a Summer Faculty Fellow at NRL, and this trip was the field component of that project.

In January and February 2026, I joined an all-women research team aboard the R/V Sikuliaq for a five-week cruise to the Weddell Sea, Antarctica — and brought my PhD student, Rose Malanga, along with me.

This fall, two new PhD students joined the Buckley Lab: Rose Malanga and Kay Sivaraj. Both arrived with a strong foundation in remote sensing and have already dug into new corners of our group’s work.

In April 2025, I traveled to Utqiaġvik, Alaska, to support a sea ice field trip for local middle school students. While I was there in an instructional role, I also had the opportunity to learn hands-on techniques for measuring sea ice properties alongside the students. A personal highlight was teaching a live class (via Zoom) of my Ice and the Climate System course while standing on the frozen Arctic Ocean. More photos and stories are featured in the University of Illinois News Bureau feature.