Acknowledgements

In memory of J. Graham Cogley

Without collaborations, this work would not have been possible. The best ideas come through exchange, teamwork, and friendship: I would like to thank all the wonderful people, scientists and students I had the chance to work with, and without whom I wouldn’t be here today. I can’t name them all here, but I hope that the many co-authors of the various published and unpublished studies, and all my colleagues at the universities of Innsbruck and Berlin will recognize themselves in this “thank you”.

Some collaborations do not lead to traditional scientific papers, and yet they are productive and meaningful. I am extremely thankful to the open-source community for welcoming me and for their support. I am thankful for all the voluntary work that goes into open-source software. In particular, I would like to thank the xarray, pangeo, and jupyter folks for everything I’ve learned from them.

A project like OGGM could not exist without its contributors: thanks to everyone who participated in the project, and wo believed in it! You made it happen. All OGGM contributors are acknowledged on our community webpage.

Another necessary ingredient for the success of OGGM is very rare: time. Traditional funding schemes do not reward long haul development projects such as OGGM, where the benefits of the work are only visible years after the first line of code has been written. I feel lucky and grateful to the University of Innsbruck for the research freedom it provided me in this tenure track appointment. I only wish that many other brilliant scientists could be given the same opportunity as I had.

More experienced researchers are wonderful allies when one feels lost and in need for advice, which often happens in an academic career. In these times, I’ve always felt supported by my mentors Ben Marzeion, Lindsey Nicholson, Mathias Rotach, Dieter Scherer and Georg Kaser. Thanks so much for your trust and your help! I hope that I will be able to provide similar support to my present and future mentees.

Finally, I would like to thank my family, my parents for their love and support, my sister Anne for her wonderful participation in the OGGM-Edu project. And, finally, no words can express my gratitude to my partner at home, at work and under the stars, my compass in the good and the bad times: Conni.

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Left: the ladders leading to the Mer de Glace as in 2003. Right: the author in 2003.
Photos: Gilles Maussion