Dr. Lauren Neitzke Adamo’s interest in science and geology started at a young age while traveling to National Parks all over the country with her family. This love was further fostered while earning her undergraduate and doctorate degrees in Geological Sciences at Rutgers University where her research focused on understanding the mechanisms and underlying causes of the abrupt climate change observed in sediment cores from the North Atlantic Ocean over the last 200,000 years. She also spent much of her graduate career teaching science and geology to a variety of formal and informal audiences and was thrilled to accept a position at the Rutgers Geology Museum as the Associate Director in 2009 and as the Museum Director in 2016. This position allows her to combine her love of teaching, science, research, and dinosaurs through the implementation of various educational activities and programming for the Rutgers and New Jersey communities.

Lauren attended the 2017 School of Ice workshop as a participant, and again in 2018 as a facilitator. It was these workshops that helped reignite her passion for polar and climate change science and gave her the inspiration to apply to the PolarTREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating) program. She was selected as one of the 12 educators for the 2018 cohort and spent a month in the Swiss Alps in the summer of 2018 working with researchers to examine the melting rates of mountain glaciers.

Through the collaborations and the networks first introduced to her through the School of Ice workshop, Lauren has been working with Rutgers, national, and international staff to bring the excitement of polar research to the University classrooms at Rutgers and the local New Jersey community.