Frank Pattyn

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Frank Pattyn is a glaciologist/ice-sheet modeller and co-director of the Laboratoire de Glaciologie of the ULB. He is also visiting professor at the University of Ghent (UGent). He is responsable for teaching geomorphology and climatology courses in the Bachelor of Geography and the Master in Environmenal Sciences at the ULB.

He developed a number of ice-sheet models, such as a three-dimensional thermomechanical ice-sheet model including higher-order stress gradients (Blatter-Pattyn model), recently extended to a full Stokes model. Such models are capable of simulating the behaviour of ice streams and their interaction with the ice sheet, as well as the ice flow over subglacial lakes. He is also actively involved in a series of Ice-Sheet Model Intercomparison Projects (ISMIP), such as ISMIP-HOM, ISMIP-HEINO, MISMIP, and recently MISMIP3D.

He took part in several expeditions to Antarctica and to glaciers of the Arctic in order to study the interaction of glaciers and ice sheets with subglacial water and the ocean, using ice radar and D-GPS.

He is president of the Belgian National Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR delegate), work package leader of ice2sea (an FP7 framework project), and member of the steering comittee of the NEEM project (Deep ice core drilling in Greenland).