The Journey to the Land where You Can Hear the Glaciers Cracking, and Romanian Research in Antarctica, in a new episode of the Project under the Lens series

A team of researchers from the National Institute of Research and Development for Biological Sciences in Bucharest (INCDSB) and the University of Bucharest is preparing for a new expedition to Antarctica.

This initiative, expected to take place in 2026 as part of the ROICE expeditions, will continue Romanian research in the Antarctic regions and aims to collect relevant data for various fields in biology, especially microbiology and biotechnology, but also in medicine, human physiology, and geology.

In this context, we were curious to learn from researchers Mihaela Păun, Manuela Sidoroff, Iris Tușa, Ovidiu Vrâncianu, Roxana Cristian, and Georgiana Grigore what such an expedition entails, what the stakes are, what are their expectations for the scheduled 2026 expedition, as well as why research in these harsh and remote lands is important for both Romania and the entire planet.

You are invited to watch the resulting material in the sixth edition of the Project under the Lens series, which can be accessed by clicking the link below.

The ROICE expeditions began in 2015 and have so far included four such excursions, conducted in 2015, 2016, 2019, and 2020. After a break of a few years, the fifth expedition is scheduled to take place in 2026, with interdisciplinary research objectives.

Because Romania does not have its own research station in Antarctica, the ROICE expeditions are based on a collaboration treaty with the KOPRI Institute in South Korea and are hosted at the King Sejong Station, one of South Korea’s two stations, located in West Antarctica on Barton Peninsula, King George Island. In fact, INCDSB is constantly working to expand its network of external collaborators to develop Romanian research in the Antarctic regions. To this end, it recently initiated a collaboration with the Institute of Biology in Turkey and is currently in talks with the Polar Institute in Bulgaria.

Based on these premises, we invited some of our colleagues from INCDSB and the University of Bucharest involved in organizing the ROICE expeditions to talk to us, among other things, about what Romania’s national strategy for Antarctic research looks like and what it should look like, about all the aspects of an excursion to a land with extreme living conditions, and, very importantly, about the most relevant scientific results that these expeditions can generate.

• When and how did Romanian research in Antarctica begin?
• When did the ROICE expeditions start, and what are their scientific goals? What research areas do they focus on?
• What are the main results obtained from these expeditions?
• What do the international research teams look like, and how many members do they have? What about the Romanian teams?
• How is field work prepared? What are the most important elements to consider?
• How long does an average expedition to Antarctica last, and how does it unfold?
• What does a day in the life of a researcher in the field in Antarctica look like?
• What is the relevance of this research for understanding climate change and its effects?
• What is the relevance of the ROICE expeditions for understanding phenomena specific to Romania?
• What is the basis for the collaboration between the National Institute of Research and Development for Biological Sciences in Bucharest and the University of Bucharest for Antarctic research?
• What are the next steps in Romanian research of the Antarctic regions, and what are the prospects for this endeavour?
• What are the team’s expectations for the expedition scheduled for 2026?

The answers to these questions are provided by researchers Mihaela Păun, Manuela Sidoroff, Iris Tușa, Ovidiu Vrâncianu, Roxana Cristian, and Georgiana Grigore in episode 6 of the series Project under the Lens.

Professor Mihaela Păun, PhD, is a scientific researcher and the Director General of INCDSB. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Bucharest in 1998. She then continued her studies with a master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Western Ontario in 2000 and a PhD in Computational Analysis, Modeling, and Applied Statistics from Louisiana Tech University in 2006. Her research interests focus on biostatistics and biocomputing, membrane computing, high-performance computing, and environmental data analysis. She graduated from the Computational Analysis and Modeling (CAM) program. In 2017, she received her habilitation in Statistics from the Bucharest University of Economic Studies, where she currently supervises doctoral students. In 2020, she was elected Vice President of the Scientific Council of the National Institute of Research and Development for Biological Sciences, and in the same year, she took on the position of Director General of the Institute. More details about Mihaela Păun can be found here.

Dr. Manuela Sidoroff is a scientific researcher, coordinates the DANUBIUS-RO Department at INCDSB, and is the Romanian representative on the Board of Governors of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) in Trieste, Italy. She is also Romania’s representative at the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) and Vice President of the National Commission for Antarctic Research of the Romanian Academy. She is also the President of the Romanian Society of Biotechnology and Bioengineering (SRBB), a member institution of the European Federation of Biotechnology. She served as the Director General of INCDSB from 2005 to 2020. More information about Manuela Sidoroff is available here.

Dr. Iris Tușa is a scientific researcher and coordinates the Department of Arctic and Antarctic Research at the National Institute of Research and Development for Biological Sciences in Bucharest (INCDSB). She has participated in three ROICE scientific expeditions to West Antarctica, on King George Island, conducted at the King Sejong research base in South Korea. The results of these expeditions have been presented at prestigious international conferences and widely disseminated to the general public through various media channels (radio, TV), as well as in schools and high schools. With a solid academic background in human physiology and biomedicine, Iris specializes in transfusion medicine, exploring advanced blood preservation technologies and the adaptability of the human body in extreme conditions. In her environmental microbiology research, she investigates microbial biodiversity in aquatic and extreme ecosystems.

Dr. Ovidiu Vrâncianu holds a PhD in biology, is a scientific researcher at the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (ICUB) and INCDSB, and a medical biologist specializing in genetics and molecular biology. His research focuses on the study of bacterial resistance mechanisms and the molecular epidemiology of antibiotic resistance. For his research in Antarctica, his primary objective is to analyse microbial communities in ice samples using next-generation sequencing techniques. The ultimate goal is to better understand polar microbial ecology and the response to environmental changes.

Dr. Roxana Cristian is a scientific researcher at INCDSB. She obtained her PhD from the Doctoral School of Biology at the Faculty of Biology, University of Bucharest. She is a medical biochemist specializing in genetics and nucleic acid chemistry. Her research areas include the study of nanoparticles and their impact on the environment and living organisms, the study of microbial communities using next-generation sequencing techniques, and the evaluation of the antimicrobial potential of certain nanoparticles of interest.

Georgiana Grigore is a university assistant and doctoral student at the Doctoral School of Biology, Faculty of Biology, the University of Bucharest. Her research activities focus on characterizing microbial communities in karstic environments using culture-dependent and culture-independent methods. Georgiana is a pioneer in the analysis of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes from various natural environmental archives in paleoecology studies. In Antarctica, a land that hosts microorganisms preserved in glaciers or actively involved in sustaining polar biodiversity, Georgiana aims to provide new perspectives on the evolution of pathogens, the effects of climate change on ecosystems, and the potential for identifying useful compounds for various practical applications.