Pope joins OPP as Program Director for Polar Cyberinfrastructure

Dr. Allen Pope has joined OPP's Antarctic Sciences section as the new Program Director for Polar Cyberinfrastructure.

Prior to NSF, Allen has many years of experience working as a polar scientist and as a service leader within the polar community. Dr. Pope most recently served as the Executive Secretary of the International Arctic Science Committee based in Akureyri, Iceland, and was formerly a Research Scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (part of CIRES at the University of Colorado Boulder), the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center, and Dartmouth College. He received his Ph.D. at Cambridge University in Polar Studies, where he also completed an MPhil in Polar Studies. Previously, Allen completed a Bachelor of Arts at Harvard University in Chemistry and Earth & Planetary Sciences, with a citation in French.

Allen’s research background is in using satellite data to study snow and ice around the world – most recently tracking lakes on the surface of the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets, studying ultra-cold surface temperatures in Antarctica, tracking ice shelf velocities and fractures, contributing to a glacier inventory of the Mongolian Altai, and researching & teaching on the undergraduate-focused Juneau Icefield Research Program. As a researcher, Allen also helped coordinate the NSF-funded Polar-Computing Research Coordination Network, participated in the Geoscience Paper of the Future project, and was a fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute in the UK. Allen also has extensive experience in community service and outreach. He has participated in the inaugural Scientific Community Engagement Fellows Program (formerly with AAAS, now with CSCCE) and has spent a month as the Sitka Science Center’s Researcher in Residence. He has also served in various volunteer leadership roles with the American Geophysical Union, International Glaciological Society, the Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee, and the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists.