Carin Ashjian

In February 2020, Ashjian took part in an expedition on a German icebreaker to monitor zooplankton. She was on an ice floe during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. She could not return to land until June, when replacement teams could complete quarantine.

Ashijan was born in Boston and grew up in Massachusetts. She spent her summer holidays on Buzzards Bay. She was an undergraduate student in biology at Cornell University, and started working as an assistant researcher in Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1984. Ashijan completed her doctoral studies at the University of Rhode Island, where she investigated the impact of Gulf Stream on the biogeography of zooplankton. Ashijan joined the Brookhaven National Laboratory as a research associate. She spent two years at Brookhaven before moving to the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. She completed two cruises to the Arctic, which inspired her research in polar regions. After six months in Miami, Ashjian returned to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Carin Jessica Ashjian (born April 13, 1960) is an American biological oceanographer who is an associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She studies how the physical environment influences the distribution of plankton in the Beaufort Sea.