Chris Derksen (he/his)

I work with satellite datasets to track changes in snow and sea ice across Canada. This work involves the analysis of large amounts of data. Having good programming and scripting skills is very important. Nearly all my work is done as part of a team. We work collaboratively with colleagues across Canada and internationally. We have regular project meetings to coordinate our work. We write and publish scientific papers in academic journals based on the results of our work.

My favourite part of the job is getting into the field to make measurements to ‘ground truth’ the satellite data, and improve the algorithms we use to extract information from the raw measurements. This often involves work in the Arctic. I consider myself very fortunate to be able to work in parts of Canada that most people don’t get to see. Field work takes a lot of planning, coordination, and training. We use specialized field equipment to make very precise measurements of the snowpack. This includes such things as snow grain size and shape. We are trained in wilderness first aid and firearms safety.

When we return from the field, we then spend a lot of time preparing the data for analysis. We also support the scientific process by reviewing the papers and research proposals of other scientists. Nearly all scientific data is open access these days, and we try hard to make our code open as well. Properly and clearly documenting your work takes a lot of time. Every work day is a little bit different. This helps keep things interesting!