UW researcher, Fulbright Scholar, spent winter above the Arctic Circle

Peralta Ferriz in Norway with her son, who turned two during the fellowship.

Think Seattle is dark in winter? Imagine going farther north. Cecilia Peralta Ferriz, an oceanographer at the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory who completed her doctorate at UW’s School of Oceanography in 2012, knows what that’s like. Last fall she was awarded a U.S. Fulbright Scholarship to spend nine months in Norway, based at the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromsø, the third largest urban area north of the Arctic Circle. She also made two trips to the biggest settlement on Svalbard, an island that is about halfway between Norway and the North Pole.

Peralta Ferriz, whose husband and toddler son joined her for the nine-month stay, kept a bilingual blog in English and Spanish about her experiences. UW Today asked her a few questions about the experience before she returns to Seattle at the end of May.