It is finally here, the end of ArcTrain and what becomes the start of a new beginning. As we pack our metaphorical bags (writing our theses, cleaning our desks out, moving onto the next step), it is time to reflect on our ArcTrain experience. Throughout the past 10 years the international graduate training group has been the home to over 150 students and postdocs and over 50 researchers studying and working at the University of Bremen, the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, and at one of the ten universities in the Canadian ArcTrain consortium. The last ten years has fostered a new, interdisciplinary community, including 75 PhD graduates, which has emerged from many years of collaboration between Canadian and German Arctic researchers. Many papers have been published and conferences attended, but at the core, ArcTrain is about the long-lasting connections and friendships made. How do we even begin to cover the impact that ArcTrain has had on the training of early career researchers in Arctic Science? As any good researcher would do, let us go back to the very beginning.
A story 15 years in the making
As every large research enterprise, ArcTrain emerged from a long prehistory of individual links. Our speakers, Anne de Vernal and Michal Kucera, share the same disciplinary background in marine micropaleontology. They first met in the course of the MARGO Project, over a decade before ArcTrain started. The MARGO project brought a large scientific community together with the aim to generate a new reconstruction of the last glacial ocean temperatures. A particularly challenging region turned out to be the Arctic. A controversy on the interpretation of the fossil record resulted in the determination by the future ArcTrain speakers to test the competing hypotheses on the habitat of the living plankton species in the most analogous modern environment – the Baffin Bay. And thus, in summer 2008 a German expedition with the Maria S. Merian and a Canadian expedition with the Amundsen crossed the waters of this remarkable miniature ocean and provided the foundation for a research program that followed. As fortune had it, in summer 2011, the German DFG and the Canadian NSERC agreed to collaborate in the training of early career researchers. This was an opportunity of a lifetime and building on many bilateral links among researchers from different disciplines, a consortium began to grow on both sides of the Atlantic. In November 2011, the core team was set, the two speakers installed, and a draft proposal was submitted. It passed the first hurdle in spring 2012 and the full proposal was submitted on 30th July 2012. Two months later, after a marathon of consultations, rehearsals and preparations, a joint DFG-NSERC evaluation took place in Bremen. The rest is history. Starting in October 2013, a remarkable 10 years of Arctic experience, collegiality, exciting research across disciplinary borders and encounters with so many enthusiastic, ambitious and talented young researchers from all over the world followed.
Over the last 10 years, the most prominent folder in my Email program was “IRTG Canada”. It was created before the name ArcTrain was conceived and contains over 2000 messages, the oldest one dated to 11th August 2011. It originates from Michael Schulz. He is the secret father of the project and also of its name! In a rather hilarious discussion early during the proposal writing, it was also him who came up with the ArcTrain as the short name for the project.
Michal Kucera
ArcTrain highlights
Looking back to the beginning, the ArcTrain community has plenty of individual stories to tell. For the sake of the reader, we would like to recollect aspects which we all experienced and which unite us in the ArcTrain experience.
ArcTrain meetings
Undoubtedly the place where the most collaboration and scientific discussion of the ArcTrain group was held, was at the Annual Meetings. These meetings brought together ArcTrain Canada and Germany in person to discuss the student’s projects and foster long-lasting mentorships within the community. In the name of being interdisciplinary, the locations of the meetings changed every year, with notable locations being Banff, Bremen, Rimouski, and Montreal (more impressions can be found in the articles on the meetings in 2020, 2021 and 2022). Every student had an internal committee of Canadian and German PI’s that acted as an advisory board for students projects. Invited speakers in the domain of Arctic research were also invited to speak at the ArcTrain conference to allow for all areas of research to be represented during the meeting. Of course, it would not be an Arctic science conference without a good icebreaker to get everyone relaxed and ready to talk science!
Summer schools
As a separate part of the ArcTrain meetings, summer schools were held in 2015 and 2019 to give students experience in the field. They were great! For a summary of the activities, and lovingly detailed blog posts on each day’s activities, you can watch this cool video (shoutout to Charles Brunette for the production!). Valentin, one of the ArcTrain graduates, remembers:
Being someone who normally does not do fieldwork, the 2019 field trip was one of the very rare opportunities to get in touch with the area I have spent so much time thinking about. Physics, statistics, and fancy satellite images may aid in scientific assessment, but being out there, experiencing the vast remoteness of the area gave me a feeling of humility which no scientific experiment can convey. I am deeply grateful to ArcTrain for this experience.
Floating universities
In addition to the summer schools, ArcTrain also organized field campaigns for the students, the Floating Universities. These were planned cruises onboard the research vessel Polarstern for students to gain ship experience and learn to sample different oceanographic parameters throughout the cruise. There were three floating universities as part of the ArcTrain program: the first one in 2015 consisted of a three-weeks cruise to the Arctic where students were able to participate in sampling within the Arctic Ocean. All you want to know about the second edition, a six-week cruise to the Central Arctic is neatly described here. The third cruise took place from the Canary Islands to Bremen, where students had the opportunity to work with passive measurements onboard the ship. This included CTD measurements and sub-bottom mapping.
Science communication
Doing research on the Arctic – its extraordinary climate, and the threat to this region and beyond caused by climate change – does not only arise a lot of further research questions, but also the need for communication. Fascinated by the Arctic, the ArcTrain students tried to spread this curiosity to the public as much as possible. There were different kinds of school activities in Germany (even during the pandemic) and Canada (one somewhat caused by the pandemic) and public talks not only on scientific stages, but also at special places, like in a pub. A booklet was printed, explaining how research on the past and future of the Arctic climate is done within ArcTrain and YouTube videos about stunning field trip experiences and funny ice experiments were created. And this multilingual blog was set up by the first cohort of PhD students in the beginning of ArcTrain, handed over several times, lasting until this official end of ArcTrain. Being fed with stories from ArcTrain, the Arctic and science, it even was honored with a prize among the “science blog of the year”. Franziska, an ArcTrain graduate from Germany, remembers:
In the very beginning of my time as an ArcTrain PhD student, we had a workshop on scientific storytelling – and I think that was a great start in all the activities that were already present in ArcTrain, and, as a 3rd cohort student in Germany, I could easily jump onto. It is so important not only to do scientific research, but also to talk about our knowledge. And I always enjoyed that ArcTrain was so active in this perspective.”
Research stays
Being an international research training group, ArcTrain was not only about the German-Canadian collaboration in science, but also about bringing people together across different scientific disciplines and cultures. Every student was provided the opportunity to visit the international collaborators and learn about their research, their culture, their way of life. Georg Sebastian, a first cohort ArcTrain student, reflects:
Looking back to my visit to Edmonton (Alberta, Canada) in 2015, I realize that it was a very influential time for me. Not only did we learn many new methods and gained scientific insight, but we were also welcomed and included on a personal level. I always enjoy remembering our good times and to date, I am benefiting from the personal connections made then.
ArcTrain in numbers
Although the success of ArcTrain is really in the people, and not the statistics, we would be hard pressed to not highlight the amazing work by the students over the last 10 years. Not only did the cohorts manage to complete impressive scientific work but also managed to keep the social media accounts running, and a sense of community between students from year to year. Considering how many students passed through the program, it is an impressive feat!
ArcTrain Canada had 87 students graduate as part of the program including both Masters and PhD students. In Germany, ArcTrain funded exclusively PhD positions. 36 full PhD positions were funded over a total duration of 9 years (3 cohorts with 12 students each). Additionally, travel support, retreats and soft skill courses were offered for 13 associated PhD students. In ten years of ArcTrain, 167 papers were published in peer-reviewed journals, not mentioning papers still undergoing review, cruise reports, technical reports or contributions to conferences in form of oral presentations and posters (the last, already almost 300 only on the Canadian side!). The number of students and published papers is visualized in the following Figure.
Personal ArcTrain stories and memories
Over 50% of the 87 graduates on the Canadian side are employed in a position relevant to their field of studies. This includes industry, government, and academic positions throughout the country. Many of the masters students associated with the grant have pursued further academic studies, with 13% of the overall graduates continuing PhD projects within the ArcTrain system. This spread over working fields is similar to graduates from the German side. Several former ArcTrain students are continuing work in academia and Arctic research, currently at different stages from postdocs to tenure track researchers, being spread far beyond Germany. Others found their place in industry as entrepreneurs or employees in smaller to larger businesses or as business consulting, or in public administration.
As ArcTrain was always about Arctic research and the training and career of people, but also about coming together, shared experiences and special moments of individual people doing their research in Canada and Germany, we want to end this blog with some personal ArcTrain stories and memories.
I first joined ArcTrain in Canada as part of my Masters (at McGill University, under Bruno Tremblay), back in 2017. Through it I got to know many people, both in Canada and Germany. Eventually these connections brought me to Germany, where I started a PhD at AWI in 2019. Even though the project/role was not ArcTrain related, I really liked what ArcTrain was doing, so I joined, this time as an associate member. I learned a lot, met very interesting people (that I keep running into around the world) and am glad for that time. Now I’m working as a scientific officer for a WMO/WCRP project (called ESMO) and the people skills that I learnt through ArcTrain are really coming to use.
Bimochan Niraula
It has been such a privilege to be part of the ArcTrain journey. There is something extraordinary about a learning community coming together, creating a shared geography for a moment in time. Grad school is a formative period, where we grow from enthusiastic and unseasoned researchers into a remarkable diversity of early career professionals, and I am so grateful to all people involved in ArcTrain for contributing to an environment in which I thrived. I will forever cherish the memories of the spectacular places I have been able to access, and the exciting projects I was able to realize with the support of ArcTrain. It is an experience I wish for all my future students.
Charles Brunette
I started as an Associated PhD Student at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), and now I’m an ESA Fellow and Postdoc at AWI. ArcTrain was really important for me because it offered a chance to explore cool interdisciplinary science and provided a safe and supportive place to develop my skills. It also introduced me to an amazing network and some great friends. Thanks to ArcTrain, I can see the bigger picture of Arctic research and understand the connections in the Arctic climate and ecosystem better. The support I got there gave me the confidence to follow my own path.
Luisa von Albedyll
Kevin Wiegand
ArcTrain supported me through this entire PhD journey, provided knowledge and guidance, and constituted an anchor when the pandemic placed further obstacles on an already rocky path. The strong community of my fellow ArcTrain colleagues and friends was a constant throughout the four years of the PhD program. With all the individual projects, everyone broadened the horizon of anybody else, providing new insights into other fields and raising new questions about my work. My ArcTrain highlights were the annual meetings in Bremen and Montreal, the retreats, and the time I spent at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
In conclusion, I want to thank everyone who has ever been involved in ArcTrain for making the program so unique. In the end, ArcTrain is not only a name or a funding number on a form – ArcTrain is the people who filled the name with life.
ArcTrain not only provided extraordinary research opportunities, but also connected me with scientists from diverse research areas. Like me, they are interested in the Arctic, and I am glad to call some of them not just colleagues, but friends.
Antoine Savard
When I started my PhD within ArcTrain at MARUM (University of Bremen, Germany), I had a very rough idea about the science I wanted to focus on – and no idea about the network that was standing behind the name “ArcTrain”. But after having started, I quickly realized how special ArcTrain was, and is. I profited a lot from the exchange with researchers from different research fields concerning the Arctic. This profit was not only a gain in scientific knowledge, but also a personal gain through all the amazing people I met in Germany and Canada, and from all over the world. I am super proud of not only having finished a PhD, but through it, becoming part of this special network. And even after having left scientific research on the Arctic, I still realize from time to time the characteristic of ArcTrain: The feeling of being a group that overlasts the time of any funding.
Franziska Tell
I joined ArcTrain at the very beginning of my PhD in winter 2022, where I had the chance to attend the Annual meeting in May 2023 before the end of the program. I presented my project and exchanged with other students on the PhD experience. I also had the opportunity to meet with researchers in various fields from Canada and Germany and I hope to keep these connections which could be relevant for a future career in academic research. Meeting all these people at the beginning of my PhD was a great way to discover all the research conducted in the Arctic and how all domains are interconnected. Even though I joined ArcTrain near the end, I feel that the ArcTrain community was extremely welcoming and helpful to the start of my PhD.
Juliette Girard
Reflecting back, it wasn’t until after my PhD that I fully realized the immense value of ArcTrain. The international community and the extensive network of colleagues and friends I gained through my time in ArcTrain are incredibly special, and I greatly appreciate them.
Vasco Müller
As a student of the first cohort, everything was still new to us. I remember having to introduce each other on the first day and I had to ask my partner, a paleo-oceanographer, about the foraminifera he worked with, as I had no idea what they were. Obviously, now I know, and the multidisciplinary community of ArcTrain taught me so much more.
My personal highlights include the field trip to the Torngat Mountains National Park in the Canadian Arctic and my time at the University of Alberta. These experiences were truly great and will always remain cherished memories.
Thank you, Michal and Anne and everyone involved in making ArcTrain happen! You paved the way for what we can proudly call a “generation of Arctic researchers”, and I am sure that we will continue to see the benefits of ArcTrain for a long time to come.
ArcTrain was really a unique research training group to be involved in. I was part of the first cohort of PhD students in Germany back in 2013. We were all in the same boat, in terms of navigating a PhD and for some of us, being completely new to Arctic research. Many of us literally found ourselves in the same boat too, during research expeditions and Torngat Mountains adventures!
Rebecca Jackson
During my time with ArcTrain, I learnt that in order to understand the complexities of climate, history and indeed the vulnerability of the Arctic region one needs a multidisciplinary team and approach and this is the ethos that ArcTrain really championed. We all made new discoveries, forged new networks, connections and friendships and importantly, learnt new skills that will serve us wherever our career paths take us.
So as ArcTrain comes full circle, I find my career has too. Ten years after I first arrived in Bremen, and several postdoc positions and projects in Denmark later, I found myself back at MARUM working on a new project. Hopefully a little wiser, definitely a little older and absolutely as fascinated by the Arctic as ever.
Raul Scarlat
The science was nice, the places were awesome, but the people were amazing. I will always remember the people. Trying to explain satellites and microwaves to paleo-climatologists was so fun. I remember getting lost in the forest while geocaching. I remember all of us talking about rules for better work life balance and how we can’t really stick to them. I remember Michal and his love for artsy movies. I remember freezing fingers, water samples and tasting very, very old mud on the Polarstern. I remember the beach camp fire in Torngat. I remember Vasco’s jokes, and Becky’s contagious laughter, and how obnoxiously right Georg was most of the time. I remember Lera dangling upside down in her harness at the climbing park and accepting life. I remember our Canadian colleagues and how stereotypically nice they all are. I remember many of your dissertation talks. I’m happy to have known you, and ArcTrain.