Renuka, please introduce yourself.
I'm Renuka Badhe, Secretary General of EuroGOOS, the European Global Ocean Observing System. I was involved in OCEAN:ICE through WP6, WP7, and WP9 when I led the European Polar Board until 2025. I founded Women in Polar Science (WiPS), which leads the EDI work across the consortium.
Tell us about your professional and academic career before becoming part of the OCEAN ICE community.
I did my PhD in Oceanography at the British Antarctic Survey studying the Southern Ocean, so OCEAN ICE feels like a return to my roots. After that I moved into international science coordination: first as Executive Officer of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), then for ten years as Executive Secretary of the European Polar Board, where I led its transformation into an independent organisation and led EPB's participation in 6 large project consortia including Ocean Ice. I also completed a Master's in Public Policy at Cambridge and diplomas in diplomatic practice and multilateral environmental agreements, reflecting my growing interest in the space where science meets policy. Since Jan 2026 I have led EuroGOOS as their Secretary General.
What do you do within OCEAN ICE?
My role has sat at the interface between the project's science and its wider policy and societal impact. Until 2025, in WP6 and WP7, I contributed to stakeholder engagement and ensuring the project's findings reached the policymakers who needed them. In WP9, the focus is on project coordination and governance, and through WiPS, we lead all of OCEAN ICE's equality, diversity, and inclusion work in the WP, making sure the project produces excellent science in a way that's genuinely inclusive.
What have you enjoyed about OCEAN ICE so far?
The breadth of the consortium. OCEAN ICE brings together people working at very different scales, from ice-sheet modellers to policy specialists and watching those connections form across the various work packages has been genuinely exciting. I also find it rewarding that EDI isn't treated as an afterthought; it is very much embedded in how we have worked from the beginning.
Tell us about a skill or trait unique to you that you would like to share?
I'm a connector. My career has been about bringing people and institutions together who wouldn't otherwise be in the same room - Antarctic scientists with EU policy experts, OECD foresight bodies with polar researchers, early-career scientists with senior leadership and so on. I really think that the best science happens when you widen the circle and are inclusive. The wider Antarctic community has just recognised this trait of mine by the award of the SCAR International Scientific Coordination Medal at the SCAR Open Science Conference, Aug 2026.
Stay tuned on our social media channels (X, Mastodon, LinkedIn and Bluesky) for more of the series of OCEAN ICE 'Researcher in the Spotlight' articles.