Mike & Christina at He racks.jpg

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Many people have been asking me just what exactly I do. Well, my official title is Research Associate. There are 3 Research Associates on station out of about 250 people in the summer, 100 in the winter. We are employed by Raytheon, who is contracted by the National Science Foundation to run the station. We help out scientists with experiments while they're here in the summer, and then run and fix experiements in the winter. Out of the 3 RA's, one is the Cryogenics Technician, which is me this year. The cryo tech has some experiments to monitor and help with, but spends a lot of time maintaining the cryogenics on station, including liquid nitrogen and liquid helium, which the scientists need for various experiments. So, I run huge stores of cryogenics and a liquid nitrogen plant. I also bring cryo to the satellite labs around station on a snowmobile. This picture is me at one of the compressed helium gas tank racks that the meteorology people use to fill their baloons.