Laura collects dripping water for paleoclimatic studies. Photo: Alessio Romeo.
In my hunt for scientists/speleologists/explorers, I hopped from one speleology course to another. One of them that was particularly close to my heart was about the environmental protection of caves and how to educate cavers and the general population about protecting underwater rivers, the source of 25% of our drinking water. During that course, I met Laura at the dinner table – she was one of my fellow participants. She had flown in for the course from Spain, where she was busy with one of her many research programmes. At the time, she spoke better Spanish than Italian, and I had fun conversing with her and swapping expat experiences.
I found out that Laura was a member of ASPROS, the same Sardinian exploration team as Jo, Vitto, one of my video geniuses, and as I later discovered, Paolo, the speleobiologist (who was not yet part of the team). An athlete, scientist and speleologist, Laura has a wide spectrum of competencies; the only hitch was that at that time, she was in Spain.
One year later, I met Laura again at a course on caves meteorology in Sassari, her home town. By then she was close to the end of her research project and was planning to return to Italy. I invited her to join the CAVES team: I needed somebody to help me with science operations and CAVEcom, and I wanted to have a back-up for Jo.
The timing was tight: she would finish in June, and I wanted her to join my course for ISS instructors in July. She spent 3 weeks in July 2012 in Cologne with Cesco to qualify as an instructor, and 10 days of August for the CAVES 2012 dry runs, and that’s how I acquired another exceptional member of the ESA CAVES team.
Loredana Bessone
Laura collects dripping water for paleoclimatic studies. Photo: Alessio Romeo.
In my hunt for scientists/speleologists/explorers, I hopped from one speleology course to another. One of them that was particularly close to my heart was about the environmental protection of caves and how to educate cavers and the general population about protecting underwater rivers, the source of 25% of our drinking water. During that course, I met Laura at the dinner table – she was one of my fellow participants. She had flown in for the course from Spain, where she was busy with one of her many research programmes. At the time, she spoke better Spanish than Italian, and I had fun conversing with her and swapping expat experiences.
I found out that Laura was a member of ASPROS, the same Sardinian exploration team as Jo, Vitto, one of my video geniuses, and as I later discovered, Paolo, the speleobiologist (who was not yet part of the team). An athlete, scientist and speleologist, Laura has a wide spectrum of competencies; the only hitch was that at that time, she was in Spain.
One year later, I met Laura again at a course on caves meteorology in Sassari, her home town. By then she was close to the end of her research project and was planning to return to Italy. I invited her to join the CAVES team: I needed somebody to help me with science operations and CAVEcom, and I wanted to have a back-up for Jo.
The timing was tight: she would finish in June, and I wanted her to join my course for ISS instructors in July. She spent 3 weeks in July 2012 in Cologne with Cesco to qualify as an instructor, and 10 days of August for the CAVES 2012 dry runs, and that’s how I acquired another exceptional member of the ESA CAVES team.
Loredana Bessone
Laura collects dripping water for paleoclimatic studies. Photo: Alessio Romeo.
In my hunt for scientists/speleologists/explorers, I hopped from one speleology course to another. One of them that was particularly close to my heart was about the environmental protection of caves and how to educate cavers and the general population about protecting underwater rivers, the source of 25% of our drinking water. During that course, I met Laura at the dinner table – she was one of my fellow participants. She had flown in for the course from Spain, where she was busy with one of her many research programmes. At the time, she spoke better Spanish than Italian, and I had fun conversing with her and swapping expat experiences.
I found out that Laura was a member of ASPROS, the same Sardinian exploration team as Jo, Vitto, one of my video geniuses, and as I later discovered, Paolo, the speleobiologist (who was not yet part of the team). An athlete, scientist and speleologist, Laura has a wide spectrum of competencies; the only hitch was that at that time, she was in Spain.
One year later, I met Laura again at a course on caves meteorology in Sassari, her home town. By then she was close to the end of her research project and was planning to return to Italy. I invited her to join the CAVES team: I needed somebody to help me with science operations and CAVEcom, and I wanted to have a back-up for Jo.
The timing was tight: she would finish in June, and I wanted her to join my course for ISS instructors in July. She spent 3 weeks in July 2012 in Cologne with Cesco to qualify as an instructor, and 10 days of August for the CAVES 2012 dry runs, and that’s how I acquired another exceptional member of the ESA CAVES team.
Loredana Bessone
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