Jon Mikkelsen is a Professor of Teaching of Mechanical Engineering at the University of British Columbia. He is the Director of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering established to support the shipbuilding industry in Canada. His teaching responsibilities include Naval Architecture, Engineering Design, and Marine Engineering. His scholarly and professional activities are primarily focused on the areas of Naval Architecture/Ocean Engineering, Sustainable Fishing Gear Design, and Engineering Education. Jon is active in several professional organizations and has recently served as technical chairperson of the Ocean, Offshore, and Arctic Engineering Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and has been elected as a Fellow of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. Jon is a strong supporter of extra-curricular design activities and serves as faculty advisor for several UBC student teams including UBC Sailbot, UBC Supermileage, and UBC Human Powered Submarine Team. 

Captain David (Duke) Snider is the CEO and Principal Consultant of Martech Polar Consulting Ltd, a privately-owned company providing global ice navigation services and support for polar shipping, ice navigation, polar research, expedition logistics support and ice related consulting services.  Martech Polar provides Ice Navigators on cargo, research, cruise and expedition ships and private yachts in ice covered waters worldwide.  Martech Polar is heavily involved in assisting owners and operators to meet Polar Code requirements through completion of Operational Assessments and Polar Waters Operations Manuals. 

Captain Snider is a Master Mariner with over 40 years at sea, operating many vessels in a broad variety of ice regimes in Arctic and Antarctic Polar Regions, the Baltic, Great Lakes and Eastern North American waters.  He has served onboard Naval, Commercial and Coast Guard Vessels. He retired from Canadian Coast Guard service as Regional Director Fleet Western Region in 2013 to run his own company.  He remains active at sea, holding both Polar Waters Advanced Certificate of Proficiency and The Nautical Institute Ice Navigator Level 2 Certification.  As a marine consultant he has extensive experience in authoring and contributing to numerous shipping feasibility studies, as expert witness in marine insurance arbitrations and cases as well as marine industry safety and risk reviews.

As an Ice Navigator Captain Snider has been the author of and contributed to many ice regime shipping feasibility studies as well as numerous papers on ice navigation.  The second edition of Captain Snider’s authoritative book Polar Ship Operations was published by the Nautical Institute in 2018 is soon to be released in a Spanish edition.  He holds a Bachelor of Maritime Studies degree granted by Memorial University of Newfoundland in 2006 and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal in 2011 for his many years as a member of The Nautical Institute dedicated to improving safety at sea, with particular focus on improving standards of ice navigation.  His honours also include the Canadian Coast Guard Exemplary Service Medal and the United States Coast Guard Antarctic Service Medal.  He was recently awarded the Maritime Museum of British Columbia Beaver Medal for outstanding achievements in polar navigation including roles in promoting internationally recognized ice navigation qualifications and by the Royal Canadian Navy Admiral’s Award for his exemplary service to the marine community in matters related to polar and ice navigation and his contributions to naval excellence.

Captain Snider is the Past President of The Nautical Institute and now sits on the Institute’s Executive Board as Vice Chair and as a member of the Finance and Audit Committee.  He is Chair of the Ice Navigator Working Group which is tasked with administering The Nautical Institute's global standard for Ice Navigator Training and Certification Standard. He is a member of The Nautical Institute’s NGO delegation to IMO on matters of ice and polar navigation.  He is presently Chair of the British Columbia Branch of The Nautical Institute. 

Dr. Claude Daley is currently a Professor in the Ocean and Naval Architectural Engineering Program at Memorial University. He is a former Associate Dean for Research for the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science and a former Chair of the Ocean and Naval Architectural Engineering Program. He has led several large arctic shipping research projects at MUN, including the GEM and STePS2 projects. Dr. Daley has been working in the area of cold regions Engineering since 1979. He specializes in ice class ship structures and was a member of the working group that formulated the IACS Polar Rules, which are the world construction standard for ice going ships. He was awarded the Davidson Medal by the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers in 2018. The Davidson Medal is awarded every two years, for outstanding contributions to ship research.

Dan McGreer is a Professional Engineer in BC and an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia in the Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering (NAME) program where he teaches courses on Ship Design. Before that Dan worked for over 30 years as a Principal Naval Architect at Vard Marine. He has been involved in all aspects of ship design such as preliminary concept development, contract design, ship performance assessment, computational fluid dynamics, marine system design and ship model testing and trials. Dan graduated in 1983 from the University of British Columbia in Mechanical Engineering with a Naval Architecture Option. Dan has worked on numerous ship design projects while at Vard Marine including managing the design of the Chilean Antarctic Vessel, the Canadian Coast Guard Polar Icebreaker, the Canadian Navy Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships, and the NZ Navy Offshore Patrol Vessels.

Dan is also very active in the Association of BC Marine Industries (ABCMI) and the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME). 

Darren joined Robert Allan Ltd. in 2000 after graduating from the University of British Columbia.   Darren holds a B.A.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering with specialization in Naval Architecture. Over the last 23 years, Darren has worked on a variety of projects responsible for all aspects of naval architecture, machinery, propulsion and system design in new and existing vessels.   Darren is currently a Project Director and is the Chair of Stability Group at the company. Darren is a registered Professional Engineer in BC and Alberta as well as a Transport Canada Appointed Tonnage Measurer.

Robert Gage joined Robert Allan Ltd in 2015 after graduating from the University of British Columbia with a Master of Engineering in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering as well as a B.A.Sc. in Integrated engineering. Robert is a Project Manager, and Team lead naval architect at Robert Allan Ltd. During his time with the company he has had extensive work in ship stability with expertise in GHS.  Robert is responsible for overseeing work completed on the naval architecture design team, including hull form development, stability analysis, structural design, and parametric 3D modelling. He has particular interest in aesthetic design and unconventional hull forms, both of which he has used in his development of designs intended for use in the offshore wind industry. Robert also assists in business development and is a member of several technical groups within the office.

Dr. David Molyneux is an associate professor in the Department of Ocean and Naval Architectural Engineering at Memorial University. Prior to that he spent over 30 years managing projects in public and private research organizations, with an emphasis on the performance of ships. This work routinely required carrying out model experiments and supervising full scale trials for ships. His work has covered predicting and optimizing the resistance and powering requirements of small boats, fishing boats, tugs, bulk carriers, tankers, warships, and icebreakers. He is a registered professional engineer (Newfoundland and Labrador) and he is currently Vice-President Americas for the Royal Institute of Naval Architects. 

Kaj Riska has more than 50 years of practise in Arctic marine technology, both as a researcher and practising engineer in various design project. A short timeline to his positions:

M.Sc. 1978 in Mathematics and D.Sc. 1988 in Naval Architecture from the Helsinki University of Technology. Professor of Arctic Marine Structures in the Helsinki University of Technology and after academia director of a ship design company ILS Ltd 2006 - 2012. Professor II at the Norwegian Science and Technology University in Trondheim 2006 - 2021. Joined Total S.A. in June 2012 as ice engineer – first in Extreme Cold group and from August 2015 in TEC/GEO being responsible for the Extreme Cold R&D envelope. Total innovation prize for Arctic LNG carrier in 2014. Chief expert in Ice Engineering in 2017.

Kaj has been a specialist on the Finnish-Swedish Ice Class Rules for the Finnish Maritime Administration bringing the recent research results into rules and formulating especially the hull rules. He contributed to design of several icebreakers and ice breaking ships, and to ice resistant FPSU in the Bohai Bay (with a soft yoke) and the Varandey terminal in the Pechora Sea. Latest design contribution was the Arctic LNG carriers to Yamal LNG. At the Helsinki University of Technology, he was responsible for the large ice laboratory at the university. About 100 refereed articles in scientific journals and a score of conference papers.

Robert Frederking has over 55 years’ experience at the National Research Council conducting research on ice engineering, ice mechanics and cold regions engineering.  He has carried out laboratory, field and analytical research on the forces generated by floating ice on offshore structures. He has been involved in the planning, measurement and analysis of global and local ice loading on ships.  Has led a number of field expeditions to measure ice characteristics and forces on offshore and port structures in the Arctic and managed several international collaborative research projects. His research has helped better define global ice loads on offshore structures and local ice pressure distributions on ships and offshore structures.  Has served on numerous advisory committees and has also assisted regulatory agencies in the assessment of ice loading on structures such as the Beaufort Sea exploratory drilling platforms and the Confederation Bridge.  He has chaired the Canadian Standards Association Technical Committee K157 that coordinated Canadian contributions to the development and maintenance of the ISO 19900 series of offshore structures standards. He most recently led the Technical Panel revising the ice actions clauses of ISO 19906 Arctic offshore structures.  He currently Chairs the Standards Council of Canada Mirror Committee to ISO TC67/SC7 Offshore structures as it expands its scope to include offshore wind energy.  His research results have been communicated to the technical community through more than 200 contract reports, conference papers and journal articles. He has a B. Sc. (Eng.) from the University of Alberta, M. Sc., University of London, and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1968.

M.Sc. 1978 in Mathematics and D.Sc. 1988 in Naval Architecture from the Helsinki University of Technology. Professor of Arctic Marine Structures in the Helsinki University of Technology and after academia director of a ship design company ILS Ltd 2006 - 2012. Professor II at the Norwegian Science and Technology University in Trondheim 2006 - 2021. Joined Total S.A. in June 2012 as ice engineer – first in Extreme Cold group and from August 2015 in TEC/GEO being responsible for the Extreme Cold R&D envelope. Total innovation prize for Arctic LNG carrier in 2014. Chief expert in Ice Engineering in 2017.

Kaj has been a specialist on the Finnish-Swedish Ice Class Rules for the Finnish Maritime Administration bringing the recent research results into rules and formulating especially the hull rules. He contributed to design of several icebreakers and ice breaking ships, and to ice resistant FPSU in the Bohai Bay (with a soft yoke) and the Varandey terminal in the Pechora Sea. Latest design contribution was the Arctic LNG carriers to Yamal LNG. At the Helsinki University of Technology, he was responsible for the large ice laboratory at the university. About 100 refereed articles in scientific journals and a score of conference papers.