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About

Keith W. Nicholls is a leading polar oceanographer and glaciologist whose research focuses on the critical interactions between ice shelves and the Southern Ocean. He is best known for his pioneering work at the grounding zone of Thwaites Glacier, one of Antarctica’s most unstable glaciers. As part of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration’s MELT project, Nicholls led the deployment of the *Icefin* robotic submersible, which in January 2020 performed the first long-range robotic exploration of a glacier’s grounding zone. This landmark achievement, published in 2020, has already garnered significant attention and provides unprecedented direct observations of the processes driving rapid ice loss. Beyond this, Nicholls has advanced the use of autonomous platforms for polar research, including developing ice-rover-based quad-polarimetric radar systems to map ice fabric and rheology at Ekström Ice Shelf. His work has been cited over 3,000 times, reflecting his profound impact on our understanding of ice-ocean interactions and sea-level rise. Nicholls’s innovative field campaigns and technological developments continue to shape the future of Antarctic glaciology.