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Michael Gerasimoff
It is highly unlikely that a career counselor would even be aware of Mike's occupation, let alone be in a position to recommend it!
Mike lives just south of the Arctic Circle in the Yukon Territory of Canada's far north. He graduated from Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada as a geologist. His research there involved the dating of rocks from a mountainous area of central British Columbia by isotope geochronology. He has always been mechanically inclined and was hired in 1991 by Canada's Geological Survey as a mass spectrometry specialist and was involved with the development of some cutting-edge technology for dating very small mineral samples. These included a carbon-dioxide laser system for dating tiny mineral samples by the Argon method, and the implementation of a Sensitive High Resolution Ion Micro Probe (SHRIMP) for use in uranium-lead isotopic dating.
Being a scientifically diverse organization, Mike's work at the Geological Survey brought him into contact with the glaciology research group and, in 1993, he volunteered to assist that group in the implementation of a new electro-mechanical drilling system built by the Survey's own Instrument Development Machine Shop. Eventually, Mike was involved in drilling ice cores from several Arctic ice caps on including Ellesmere, Baffin, and Devon Islands.
In 1996, Mike left the Geological Survey and joined Icefield Instruments Inc., where he applied his design skills to developing new electromechanical drills. The first of these drills was purchased by the University of New Hampshire's Climate Change Research Center. Mike accompanied Paul Mayewski and a UNH crew on a drilling expedition to a glacier north of Mt. Everest, in Tibet, in the spring of the following year. Mike joined another UNH expedition west of Everest in the Khumbu district of Nepal in the autumn of 1998, to continue that Himalayan research.
His experience with ice-core drilling in a range of challenging environments makes him well suited to take on the Antarctic. Mike realizes that there is a lot of responsibility in this position, because it is the "front end" of much subsequent research conducted under laboratory conditions: failure to retrieve core samples ultimately means the collapse of the core-based research, so for him failure is not an option.
Besides enjoying the field work for the opportunity to contribute to scientific research and the camaraderie that accompanies such physically isolated and demanding work, there is also the opportunity to test, examine, and thereby improve the engineering of new drilling equipment. More-scientific approaches to the drilling process might also result from such an extended field season and would have important implications beyond Antarctica and the ITASE project.
Mike enjoys a range of outdoor activities including canoeing, fishing, hunting, and forays into the mountains. During the long winters in Whitehorse, he skis cross-country and helps supervise youth activities in the local Biathlon organization, and catches up on his reading!
