Alison Criscitiello is a National Geographic Explorer, ice core scientist and high-altitude mountaineer. She explores the history of sea ice in polar and high-alpine regions using ice core chemistry. This involves long months of living in a tent and drilling ice cores in places like Antarctica, Alaska and the Canadian high Arctic. Criscitiello’s work also focuses on environmental contaminant histories in ice cores from the Canadian high Arctic and the water towers of the Canadian Rockies. She is the Director of the Canadian Ice Core Lab and an Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta. In 2010, she led the first all-women’s ascent of Lingsarmo, a 22,818-foot peak in the Indian Himalaya. Criscitiello has received three American Alpine Club (AAC) climbing awards, the John Lauchlan and Mugs Stump alpine climbing awards, and she earned the first Ph.D. in glaciology ever conferred by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Criscitiello is the founder and co-director of Girls on Ice Canada. When not busy shivering for science, Criscitiello seeks out the cold for fun, working as a climbing ranger in the national parks and guiding expeditions to peaks in the Andes, Alaska and the Himalaya.