Mario was born at the foot of the Alps in Turin, Italy. A trained researcher, with a PhD in the feeding ecology of walrus, Mario has significant fieldwork experience in remote areas in the Arctic, Antarctic and the Bolivian Altiplano.

Before joining Hurtigruten, Mario worked at the University of Tromsø, Norway, where he was an award-winning teacher and communicator.

Friederike grew up in a large family in Southern Germany, where her brothers taught her to play football, swim, and enjoy getting completely covered in mud. This may be why she became a geologist, graduating with a PhD from Heidelberg, focusing on sedimentary rocks in Spain.

In 2013, she started at the University of Bergen, working on landscape formations in East Africa and Norway. Her Hurtigruten adventure started in 2015, and she is relishing the chance discover more of the world with her fellow explorers.

Jean received his PhD in geology/marine sedimentology from the University of Bremen, Germany. He is specialized in palaeoclimatology - or  "the study of changes in climate taken on the scale of the entire history of Earth" - and is also a lecturer.

He currently lives in France, where he does considerable palaeoclimatologyrelated research that he publishes in international peer-reviewed journals.

Vanessa has a bachelor’s degree in marine science with Arctic studies. Currently, she is a master student at the University in Tromsø and University Centre in Svalbard.

Her MSc degree is in marine ecology with a focus on the Arctic marine ecosystem and more specifically the microscopic plants and animals in seasonal ice attached to land.

Will holds a PhD in biological oceanography and works in interdisciplinary climate research programmes at the University of Kiel, Germany. He has participated in multiple international seagoing expeditions into the Arctic.

As a deepsea and benthic zone ecologist, he focused on the biological and physical exchange process at the seafloor-water interface.