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| 2000 Team |
Ben Cavallari
Field Assistant
University of Maine
Orono, Maine
My name is Benjamin Cavallari, and this is my first year on the ITASE Expedition. I write this bio as a senior from the University of Maine at Orono, majoring in Geological Studies. I am currently from Deering, New Hampshire where my family lives on a small, self-sufficient farm. I grew up in the town of Rehoboth, Massachusetts and after finishing high school, attended Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, New Hampshire. For my first two years I frolicked around many courses, enjoying a great liberal arts school to its fullest, but all the while I knew that Geology and the Earth Sciences were screaming for my attention. Unfortunately, Franklin Pierce could not supply what I needed for a degree, so sadly, but with high hopes, I found my way to the University of New Hampshire. It was on the Durham campus where I became aquatinted with the Climate Change Research Center, and their many ongoing projects. One project in particular, involved processing and analyzing the Devon ice core for atmospheric dust accumulations. The Devon Core was drilled and extracted from a glacier located on Devon Island in the Canadian Northwest Territories. During the school year, I decided that volcanology was the specific area of Geology that I wished to pursue, then chose to follow the team of researchers (specifically Dr. Greg Zielinski) to the University of Maine at Orono. Not long after I decided to accompany the group, I was asked to join this year’s ITASE field team. After the many, many hours of preparation for this expedition and all the freezer work I’ve completed for Devon Core and other ice-core projects, I am very ready to take on many tasks of a field assistant, even if it will be done so in the harshest environment on Earth.
