Extreme Science: From the Arctic to the Antarctic to the Himalaya
Ulyana talks about her adventure science expeditions spanning the globe: from working on the back deck of an icebreaker in Antarctica as part of a team from Rice University, to tracking melting of debris-covered glaciers in Nepal for her PhD, to measuring snow pollution impacts on Baffin Island (Canadian Arctic) with partial sponsorship from National Geographic. Ulyana runs “Science in the Wild,” an adventure travel company aimed at getting ordinary people out on citizen science expeditions – pushing their limits as well as pushing the realm of what’s possible in field science.
Ulyana received her PhD in geological sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder in May 2015. Prior to that, she completed her Masters degree in planetary geology at Brown University and B.S. in earth science at Rice University. In September/October 2016, she was chosen as mission commander for the NASA Johnson Space Center’s HERA (human exploration research analog) 30-day isolation experiment, simulating a long-duration mission to an asteroid. Ulyana was named one of 120 semifinalists out of 18,354 applicants for NASA’s 2017 astronaut class.