Dr Denis Samyn is an environmental geologist and glaciologist interested in glacier systems and the cryosphere in both polar and high-altitude regions.
At the University of Central Asia (UCA), Dr. Samyn is jointly appointed as an Associate Professor at the School of Arts and Sciences (SAS) and as a Senior Cryosphere Researcher at the Mountain Societies Research Institute (MSRI) in Tajikistan. His work centers on glacier, snow, and permafrost dynamics in Central Asia, especially the Pamirs, and contributes to earth science and cryosphere education in the region.
Dr Samyn holds an MSc in Geology from the Catholic University of Louvain, and a PhD in Glaciology/Geology from the Free University of Brussels in Belgium. Through his diverse doctoral and postdoctoral experiences at the University of Brussels in Belgium (FRIA & BELSPO Fellowships), the University of Uppsala in Sweden (Marie Curie Fellowship), the University of Nagaoka in Japan (JSPS Fellowship), and the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium (Marie Curie Fellowship), Dr. Samyn developed a broad expertise in cryospheric processes across various climatic and altitudinal zones in several continents.
Dr Samyn recently served as Senior Cryosphere Scientist and Group Lead at ICIMOD, contributing to glacier monitoring projects in Nepal’s Langtang and Mustang regions, supervising a new permafrost program in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH), and engaging with local communities to assess the impact of cryospheric change on their livelihoods. He also co-organized and chaired the scientific committee of the 2019 CryoForum in Kathmandu, an international symposium bridging the gap between scientific research and societal impacts of cryospheric changes in the HKH region.
Dr Samyn has participated in research projects in Antarctica, Greenland, Alaska, Siberia, Svalbard, the European Alps, the Rwenzori Mountains of East Africa, and now focuses on Central Asian cryosphere and high-altitude environments.
Dr Samyn’s interdisciplinary research combines geochemistry, geophysics, microbiology, satellite remote sensing, field instrumentation, and modeling to study cryospheric and high mountain landscape dynamics. His publications span topics such as basal ice and marine ice processes, glacier-climate interactions, the structure and chemistry of snow and ice, ice core paleoclimatology, and frozen ground and permafrost processes. His work contributes to global efforts in understanding past environments and climate change through the lens of the cryosphere, and supports sustainable development initiatives in vulnerable high-mountain regions.
