荔枝视频

As he breathed in the brisk Arctic air, Jonas Stankevicius couldn鈥檛 help but take a moment to soak in his surroundings.

Aboard the I/B Oden for the 2025 Canada-Sweden Arctic Ocean Expedition, the Schulich School of Engineering PhD student was one of six early career researchers from Canadian universities getting the ultimate hands-on learning experience.

Thanks to the support from the , Stankevicius spent six weeks last summer learning about life at the North Pole while performing seabed mapping research in the Arctic Ocean.

As someone who spends a lot of time in front of a screen as a computational hydrologist focused on Great Slave Lake, he says being surrounded by ice as far as the eye could see, as well as a few polar bears, was nothing short of profound. 

鈥淪ea-floor mapping is being done 24 hours a day and then whenever the boat stops, everyone just drops what they鈥檙e doing and starts taking samples,鈥� Stankevicius says. 鈥淛ust seeing the sheer scale of the ice and the ocean is something that you can鈥檛 really appreciate from looking at images or maps.鈥�

He hopes sharing his story will also inspire future engineering students to take advantage of unique opportunities.

From speedway to waterway

If you had told Stankevicius a few years ago that he would be standing on the Earth鈥檚 northernmost point, he might have laughed at you.

Originally from Lithuania, he earned his bachelor鈥檚 degree in motorsport engineering at the University of Huddersfield in the U.K. in 2014, as his dream was to design Formula One race cars.

Stankevicius spent a few years designing engine components, cooling systems and turbochargers for a handful of companies in the U.K. before deciding to change things up.

He came to the 荔枝视频 in 2022 to enrol in the , where his interest was piqued taking a sustainable water systems course with Drs. Qi Zhou and Alain Pietroniro, both PhD.

鈥淚t kind of relates back to what I studied back in my bachelor鈥檚 working on fluid dynamics,鈥� Stankevicius says. 鈥淚 studied thermodynamics, which essentially governs the energy and water cycle of lakes and the circulation within it, so it felt like a really good fit.鈥�

Out from behind the computer screen

Zhou says he thought it would be a great opportunity for Stankevicius to see a new part of the world and see the real-world implication of what he otherwise has only seen on a computer screen. 

鈥淚 want students to get more exposure to this kind of thing because they sometimes don鈥檛 understand the challenges associated with field work and the need for good data for their models,鈥� Zhou says. 鈥淚 think it鈥檚 really good to see something that鈥檚 real and much, much bigger than what they study.鈥� 

The added bonus, in his eyes, was that the Canada-Sweden Expedition was 鈥渓ike a small United Nations on a ship,鈥� allowing plenty of idea sharing and multidisciplinary networking while exploring our changing climate.

A new perspective on climate change

Stankevicius says he was really impressed by the array of knowledge aboard the ship.

Not only were the students collecting samples and analyzing data, but he says professors provided more than 30 hours of lectures, group presentations and individual assessments as part of Arctic Research School 2025, an aspect of the 2025 Canada-Sweden Arctic Ocean Expedition.

Participating students earned credits as they learned about the Arctic ecosystem, including oceanography and atmospheric phenomena.

Stankevicius, who passed his PhD candidacy upon returning to U荔枝视频 and is working towards receiving his doctorate soon, says the expedition provided him with a new perspective on how climate change has an impact beyond the Great Slave Lake region or even the Arctic.

鈥淚鈥檓 hoping we will help open people鈥檚 eyes and get them to understand how to adapt to climate change,鈥� he says. 鈥淭his expedition left a really deep impression on me.鈥�

Applications are open for the until Jan. 11.