Dr Rebecca Dell (pictured – photo by Mark Chambers) has been appointed Assistant Professor at the Scott Polar Research Institute. She is the first woman to hold a full-time permanent academic position there.
Rebecca completed her geography undergraduate degree at the University of Durham, and her MPhil at Newcastle, before completing her PhD at the Scott Polar Research Institute. She specialises in using satellite imagery to monitor surface meltwater on Antarctic ice shelves, using remote sensing and machine learning.
Rebecca’s current postdoc, entitled ‘Controls on Lake Formation on Ice Shelves,’ is funded by the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative Fellowship Scheme. Her work has led to the development of a Random Forest Classifier that is trained to detect both slush and ponded water across Antarctica’s ice shelves.
“I am over the moon to be able to continue my career at the Scott Polar Research Institute, and I am incredibly grateful to the many people that have supported me in order to get to this point,” she told us. “Whilst I am the first woman to hold a full-time academic post, many incredible women have worked at SPRI before me, and I owe much of this success to them.
“I have many big plans for my research, teaching, and outreach at SPRI,” she says. “My research will continue to assess the stability of Antarctica’s ice shelves, hopefully through a combination of fieldwork and remote sensing. In terms of teaching and outreach, I hope to continue to increase the diversity of polar research, and to inspire future generations.”