Newly created Swiss Polar Institute to launch a major Antarctic expedition

Media releases, information for representatives of the media Media Relations (E) The Swiss Polar Institute with articipation of the University of Bern will study the Earth's poles and extreme environments. Its first project is ambitious: an international scientific expedition, comprising 55 researchers from 30 countries working on 22 research projects, will circumnavigate Antarctica. The future of the Earth's poles is critical. In the coming decades, major international negotiations will focus on the polar regions, which are bearing the brunt of global warming. Switzerland, intent on having its voice heard and making a contribution in a field in which it already has solid expertise, today announced the creation of the Swiss Polar Institute (SPI). This new interdisciplinary center will be devoted to researching the Earth's poles and other extreme environments. The SPI, based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), is a consortium of Swiss universities - EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), ETH Zurich and the University of Bern - and was cofounded with Editions Paulsen.