On 18 June, the GLEX Summit will feature the 2024 edition of SOE – Space, Ocean and Earth Insights Workshop, this time placing female leadership at the centre of Universe exploration. Women in Exploration: Breaking Boundaries is the theme that will set the stage for a panel discussion with four bold women. The UT Austin Portugal Program teams up again with GLEX as one of SOE’s Visionary Partners.

What can you expect from SOE’24?

Starting from the immensity of possibilities – yet to be discovered – that the Universe, the Oceans, and the Earth hold, the aim of this year’s edition is to draw a parallel with the role that women have played in researching these ecosystems and improving our understanding of how they function and interact.

The event will be the perfect opportunity for pioneering female astronauts, astrophysicists, marine biologists, engineers, and environmentalists to showcase their work and contribute, through their testimonies, to inspiring other girls and women to follow their dreams and not give up on their goals. These can be infinite as the range of possibilities that science offers them.

All the way from UT Austin, Dr Kirstin Schulz, Research Associate Computational Research in Ice and Ocean Systems Group, will talk us through her exciting expedition to the North Pole, an experience that meant much more than breaking ice. It was way more about breaking boundaries.

Meet our UT Austin Portugal Expert: Kirstin Schulz Research Associate Computational Research in Ice and Ocean Systems Group, UT Austin

Kirstin Schulz obtained a Masters’s degree in Applied Mathematics at the Technical University of Clausthal-Zellerfeld and holds a PhD degree in Physical Oceanography from the University of Rostock in Germany. Her main field of research are small scale mixing and transport processes in the ocean, and their implication for the distribution of tracers, such as suspended sediments and nutrients. Kirstin has been on several ship-based research expeditions, from the Baltic to the Caribbean Sea and the Arctic Ocean, and is familiar with data processing and analysis from most standard oceanographic equipment. In her current project GRISO, she also investigates the interaction of waters from the Arctic Ocean and tidewater glaciers in Greenland, which is again a region dramatically affected by global warming. To do so, she will make use of the CRIOS group’s expertise in advanced computational modeling. Kirstin’s biography is available here.

Looking forward to becoming an extreme explorer?