Early career researcher Norbert Pirk started his position at the Department of Geosciences as a LATICE postdoc in 2017. Since then he has been largely responsible for the LATICE-flux infrastructure and its use in several research collaboration. Just a few years later, he received his first grant from the Research Council of Norway under the FRIPRO-programme's 'Young Research Talent' category. In the Spot-On project, he and his team developed a methodology to upscale the flux measurements from the flux towers (see image) using drone swarms in order to evaluate climate models. Building on this experience, he proposed the project idea 'Actively learning experimental design in terrestrial climate science (ACTIVATE)' to the highly competitive ERC's Starting Grant programme. We are happy to announce that ACTIVATE has been awarded funding as one of very few StGs in Norway. You can more here (in Norwegian).
We congratulate Norbert for his big success and look forwards to following ACTIVATE and its LATICE synergies in the years to come.