Professor Mienert has dedicated his scientific pursuits to the response of polar continental margins to climate change, becoming a leading expert in the field. He retires from a long, internationally acclaimed career.
Matthias Forwick, Head of Department
Karin Andreassen, CAGE Director
We would like to inform you that our former Head of Department and founding director of CAGE, professor Jürgen Mienert, retired September 1st.
Jürgen has since 1998 been professor in Arctic marine geology and geophysics at Department of Geosciences (former Department of Geology) at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. He has a Master and a PhD in geology from the Christian-Albrechts Universität zu Kiel in Germany. He has been a postdoctoral researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in USA and Scientific leader in Marine Geophysics at GEOMAR, Centre for Ocean Research in, Kiel Germany. Jürgen is an international leading expert on the response of polar continental margins to climate change. As leader of several large international EU-financed research-consortia and –projects, like the Ocean Margin Research Consortium (OMARC), Continental Slope Stability (COSTA), European North Atlantic Margins (ENAM) and European Seafloor Observatories (ESONET), Jürgen focused on processes that affect the stability of polar continental margins. Through the use of advanced industry technologies and contributions to development of innovative research infrastructure, he sat a standard for using new revolutionizing methods in marine geoscience, e.g. high-resolution three-dimensional seismic equipment and K-landers seafloor observatories, equipment that are intensively used at CAGE.
Jürgen started his work at the former Department of Geology in 1998, after termination of a successful expedition on RV Akademik Keldysh during which he and other scientists dove to the seafloor at the Håkon Mosby mud volcano in the southwestern Barents Sea, a key site to study methane seepage from the sub-seafloor. With his arrival, Jürgen brought the lead of the European Research Project ENAM II to Tromsø.
Jürgen has served at countless boards and committees, both at local, national and international level. He was Head of Department at Department of Geology from 2009 until 2014. The probably biggest achievement of his scientific career was the funding of the Norwegian Centre of Excellence “Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate – CAGE” which commenced on 01. Mars 2013. Jürgen led the establishment of CAGE and developed the centre during the first five years of its lifetime, resulting in an exceptionally good mid-term evaluation. He published c. 120 peer-reviewed scientific papers that are frequently cited, some even more than 10 years after their publication, e.g. the COSTA special issue where he was editor. This volume was published in 2004 and it has been one of the two best-cited special issues in Marine Geology in 2016-2017 and 2017-2018.
During his career, and in particular after the establishment of CAGE, Jürgen was very engaged in the education of early-career scientists and gender balance. He has supervised 23 PhD students, 8 postdoctoral researchers and c. 40 Master students, some continuing their scientific careers at Department of Geosciences in Tromsø, as well as elsewhere in Norway and abroad.
Jürgen has made substantial contributions to the development of the Department of Geosciences, the Faculty of Science and Technology and UiT during his time in Tromsø. We would like to thank him for his tremendous efforts and we wish him all the best for his new phase in life as a pensioner!
