University of Tasmania graduate, Professor Helen Fricker, honoured for major Antarctic science research

This scientist has helped lead a billion-dollar NASA satellite mission and recently travelled to Antarctica with a former Google CEO – but her most “surreal” moment happened three years ago.

Professor Helen Fricker, one of the 2023 UTAS Alumni Award winners. Pictured here in Antarctica. Picture: Supplied

Part of Antarctica is named after her and she’s helped lead a $1bn NASA satellite mission but Professor Helen Fricker still looks back fondly at her time studying at the University of Tasmania, saying it was a formative moment in her career as a glaciologist.

Professor Fricker, who works at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego, has been recognised in the 2023 UTAS Alumni Awards for her remarkable contributions to Antarctic science.

“It makes me feel very happy that my work is being acknowledged like this and just to get that sort of recognition is really great for the field that I’m in and for me and my research and my group and everything that I came to the States to do – straight from Tasmania, actually,” she told the Mercury.

Professor Helen Fricker, one of the 2023 UTAS Alumni Award winners. Picture: Erik Jepsen

The 54-year-old, who has won the UTAS International Alumni Award, graduated from the university with a PhD in 1999.

She is considered a global leader in the study of the Antarctic ice sheet and her work has been cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to establish the physical basis of global warming.

Originally from the UK, Professor Fricker moved to Tasmania in 1994 to begin her PhD at UTAS.

“It was a great place to study and I got to go to Antarctica on the Aurora Australis,” she said.

“I spent 22 days on the Amery Ice Shelf doing all of the first GPS surveys in Antarctica. Basically, my PhD was all about using satellite altimetry, which is an instrument that measures the height of the ice. And I actually still do that but I use a different type of altimetry.

“But the area I did my PhD in is what I still mainly focus on because we’re still trying to understand the ice and how it’s changing.”

Professor Fricker was a member of the science team behind NASA’s ICESat and ICESat-2 missions, tasked with mapping the world’s ice sheets as they change over time. The missions are producing major insights into how ice sheets are responding to climate change.

Professor Helen Fricker (left) with Sophie Nowicki in Antarctica. Picture: Supplied

She has briefed the Californian Governor on sea level rise and recently travelled to Antarctica with former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, on his private icebreaker, to examine the changes taking place there due to global warming.

But the most “surreal” moment of Professor Fricker’s career came three years ago, when the government of the British Antarctic Treaty named a piedmont on Adelaide Island – located off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula – after her.

“That was completely out of the blue. I had no clue that was happening,” she said.

“There was a piece of Antarctica on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula near the British base, Rotherer, and it’s called the Fricker Ice Piedmont. It’s kind of crazy.

“My kids were like, ‘Can we go and build a hotel there?’ And I [said], ‘It’s really not that sort of place’.”

2023 UTAS ALUMNI AWARD WINNERS:

Distinguished Alumni Award:

Professor Tim Walsh OBE, DSc, MAE

UTAS qualifications – BAppSc (MLS) 1986, GradDip (Immunology and Microbiology) 1989

Tim Walsh is a Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of Oxford and the Co-Director and Biology Lead for the Ineos Oxford Institute for Antimicrobial Research. He is director of BARNARDS, examining the burden of neonatal sepsis in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Rwanda, Burundi, Egypt, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Ethiopia.

International Alumni Award:

Professor Helen Amanda Fricker

UTAS qualification – PhD 1999

Helen Amanda Fricker is Professor of Geophysics at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. She is a global leader in the study of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, having revolutionised our understanding of how the ice sheet works and how it interacts with the surrounding oceans.

Young Alumni Award:

Mrs Annabel McKay

UTAS qualifications – GradCertN (Specialisation) 2018, GradDipN (Specialisation) 2019, MCN (Specialisation) 2022

Annabel McKay is a haematology oncology clinical nurse at Brisbane’s Mater Private Hospital and an Associate Lecturer and Academic Clinical Facilitator and Supervisor at the University of Southern Queensland.

She has received the Pride of Australia Medal for Care and Compassion, the Australian Nurse of the Year (Graduate Category), and the Professor Catherine Turner Medal for Excellence in Nursing.