Vickie Siegel works at the intersection of autonomous robotics, polar research, planetary science, and cave exploration. She leverages her interdisciplinary perspective to lead expeditions with ambitious technology and research goals in challenging environments all around the globe. For over 17 years Vickie has worked with a leading field robotics team in research projects which use cold, icy environments on Earth as simulation environments for robots that will someday explore the ice-covered moons of Jupiter and Saturn. In this way, Vickie has accumulated over a year’s time in Antarctica working with underwater robotic systems to explore beneath the ice of McMurdo Sound and Lake Bonney. As part of a team of glaciologists, Vickie has run field camps on the Greenland ice sheet, documenting the rivers that form on the ice from summer ice melt and carve deep, vast ice caverns called moulins. Building on this experience and driven by a desire to experience more of the Arctic, Vickie went on to spend five continuous months in Greenland working with a small, isolated crew to maintain a US research installation through a brutal polar winter, much of it in total darkness. Aside from her passion for cold places, Vickie is also a cave explorer who works on expeditions to explore and map some of the world’s deepest cave systems, located in southern Mexico. In 2019 she led an international effort to explore and map what is believed to be the world’s largest underground lake, a water-filled cave called Dragon’s Breath, using an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. She is the field operations manager for Stone Aerospace, one of the founders of an underwater robotics company, Sunfish, Inc., and is the proprietor of Sisu Field Solutions, a fieldwork planning and operations consultancy.

Language spoke: English

Photo credit: The Explorers Club