As a Mechanical Engineering student from the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, Michael Miller probably did not expect to spend his summer in sunny Rhode Island measuring how fast Antarctic glaciers are melting. Mike is actually helping to develop a new method to measure dissolved neon (Ne) in glacial meltwater using mass spectrometry. According to Mike and his advisor Brice Loose, it is like looking for a needle (Ne) in a haystack (air), but Ne promises to be a very sensitive indicator of where and how fast glaciers are melting, thus helping to better circumscribe global seawater level rise.

Stipends and housing are provided to 12 students participating in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Oceanography (SURFO) program (https://web.uri.edu/gso/what-we-do/academics/surfo-program/) based at the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. The 10-week program is funded by the National Science Foundation.

Featured Image: Michael Miller carefully fixing a leak on the quadrupole mass spectrometer.