Wolfgang Rack is a Professor at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch (New Zealand). The University is ranked within the top 400 in the world (284th), and the city is ranked 85th in this year’s QS Best Student Cities index. Wolfgang is working since 2006 for Gateway Antarctica, which is the University’s Center for Antarctic Studies and Research. Before coming to New Zealand he was a postdoctoral fellow and research scientist at the German Polar Research Institute (Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Bremerhaven).
Wolfgang’s passion is remote sensing and polar climate, for which he received a masters degree in meteorology and a doctoral degree in glaciology from the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Born in Graz, the capital of one of Austria’s nine federal states (Styria), he grew up in beautiful Aussee, and he attended the St. Benedicte’s Monastery College in Admont.
Wolfgang is an active research scientist who is publishing in peer reviewed science journals. He contributed to groundbreaking discoveries about the break-up of Antarctic ice shelves and their stabilizing effect on the grounded Antarctic ice sheet. For his research to validate and verify satellite measurements he spent 17 field seasons in various regions of Antarctica, and he participated in field work in Greenland, Svalbard, Patagonia, and the European and Southern Alps. He is currently involved in studies about sea ice and carbon cycle feedbacks in the Southern Ocean.
Wolfgang lives with his wife Ursula, a polar and environmental historian, in Christchurch.
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