On Monday, Nicolas spent two hours talking to a class of high schoolers at Agnes School about his work in Antarctica managing energy production at the world’s first ever zero-emission polar research station.

Nico's presentation was part of this semester’s geography curriculum for students in Ms Teresa Trelles’ seconde (sophomore) geography class at the high school. A big fan of Ernest Shackleton, Ms Trelles had introduced the topic of Antarctica to her class the week before. Then this past week she and her students were thrilled to have a member of the Belgian Antarctic Research Expedition (BELARE) team in her classroom to be able to learn more about the most remote continent on Earth from someone who lives and works there for a few months out of the year.

Nico began the two-hour classroom intervention with a presentation that talked about  Belgium’s history in Antarctica, his job as Head Engineer at the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica, the zero-emission concept of the station, how the station produces energy from renewable wind and solar, how it recycles water, daily life at the station, and the wide variety of research scientists do there.

The children were very curious, asking Nico lots of questions about his work and living in Antarctica several months of the year.

Following his visit, each student will have to write an article about Nico’s visit. The best article will be selected to appear in the school’s newspaper "Le petit Écolier".
Nico was so popular the teacher and students would like to have Nico and perhaps his colleagues back again to give another talk.

We view another group of young people turned on to polar science and STEM topics an important part of what IPF does. We’ll be back!