Aleksandr completed his PhD at the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, following earlier study in his native Russia and the United States. During his PhD, Aleksandr’s research focused on geophysical and geological investigations of high-latitude continental margins to reconstruct former ice-sheet behavior and understand long-term ice-ocean interactions in the Arctic and Antarctica.
Although empirical reconstructions are essential for understanding past changes to ice sheets, numerical ice-sheet simulations are needed to project future ice-sheet dynamics and associated changes to sea-level. Aleksandr therefore used the time in his Fellowship year to pivot into the computational and numerical modelling of ice sheets and ice masses with the Kingslake Group at Columbia University.
Aleksandr’s placement was an opportunity to bridge the gap between the empirical and the numerical ice-sheet reconstructions, a bridge that is crucial for work towards a deeper understanding of how ice sheets are responding to changing environmental conditions and to predict their future evolution more accurately. Now, Aleksandr will continue his work as a Junior Research Fellow at Peterhouse, the University of Cambridge. In the hope to further our knowledge of glacial processes, his future projects will combine the already familiar empirical approaches with numerical modelling techniques that he acquired during his placement year.