WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., the world leader in serving science, today announced it has joined the ICE MEMORY initiative, a global effort led by the Fondation Université Grenoble Alpes with patronage from the French and Italian National Commissions for United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) created to protect the memory of the past held within mountain glaciers. As a sponsor of the initiative, Thermo Fisher will participate in the ICE MEMORY opening ceremony and press conference at UNESCO headquarters in Paris this week.
“We are excited to have Thermo Fisher as a partner, given their breadth and depth of innovative technologies, their position as a worldwide leader in spectrometry and chromatography systems and solutions, and their continuing support and advancement of climate change research.”
As part of this sponsorship, Thermo Fisher will be donating its innovative analytical technologies for use in the state-of-the-art laboratory to allow researchers to identify and examine the composition of glacial ice cores. Specifically, scientists will use the Thermo Scientific Dionex Integrion HPIC ion chromatography systems, Thermo Scientific Chromeleon chromatography data system software and Thermo Scientific iCAP RQ ICP-MS. These instruments will be used to analyze the ice core samples in a range of areas including chemical composition and trace elements.
The mission of the ICE MEMORY program is to extract and store ice cores from the mountain glaciers that are most vulnerable to climate change, providing future generations of scientists with vital samples to study and better understand environments and climate change.
“The ICE MEMORY initiative is an ambitious and exciting endeavor that will allow scientists and future generations to better understand our environments, climates and their evolution,” said Jakob Gudbrand, president of chromatography and mass spectrometry at Thermo Fisher. “We are honored to be a partner and proud to play a role in this important initiative.”
“The ice in mountain glaciers holds the memory of the region’s climate and environment; and understanding past climates is central to understanding future change,” said Patrick Lévy, Fondation Université Grenoble Alpes President. “We are excited to have Thermo Fisher as a partner, given their breadth and depth of innovative technologies, their position as a worldwide leader in spectrometry and chromatography systems and solutions, and their continuing support and advancement of climate change research.”
About ICE MEMORY
The ICE MEMORY initiative is a global, multi-year effort to create a global archive of glacial ice. As part of this important undertaking, scientists will extract non-polar ice cores from high-altitude mountain glaciers of all over the word, starting with France, Bolivia, Italy to protect the “ice memory” of each region’s climate and environment. This global archive, to be preserved in Antarctica, will allow next generation scientists – as well as today’s – to study and better understand climate change and our environment and provide the potential for future discoveries with future technologies. For more information, visit us on the web or Facebook.
About Thermo Fisher Scientific
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is the world leader in serving science, with revenues of $18 billion and more than 55,000 employees globally. Our mission is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. We help our customers accelerate life sciences research, solve complex analytical challenges, improve patient diagnostics and increase laboratory productivity. Through our premier brands – Thermo Scientific, Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, Fisher Scientific and Unity Lab Services – we offer an unmatched combination of innovative technologies, purchasing convenience and comprehensive support. For more information, please visit www.thermofisher.com.
