Kristoffer Szilas

Szilas has been on about a dozen climbing expeditions around the world, which have resulted in several first ascents of previously unclimbed mountains.^[2][3][4] A few of these expeditions were carried out together with the American mountaineer Jess Roskelley according to Szilas' personal website.^[1] Their most notable achievement was the first ascent of a route that they named the 'Hypa Zypa Couloir' on the Citadel in the Kichatna Range, Alaska.^[5] In 2009 Szilas made the first ascent of the mountain Ren Zhong Feng in the Sichuan Province of China, and 2012 he completed the first ascent of a mountain in Kyrgyzstan, which he named Peak Lea after his wife.^[3][4]

Szilas was trained as a geologist from the University of Copenhagen where he obtained a Ph.D. degree in 2012. He conducts research on some of the oldest rocks on Earth, found in SW Greenland.^[6] Szilas has previously carried out postdoctoral research at Columbia University in New York and subsequently worked as a researcher at Stanford University in California.^[7][8] He then returned to Denmark where he first worked as a postdoc at GEUS, and is currently an assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen. According to his personal statement his research: "focuses on the geochemistry and petrology of Archaean rocks from Greenland. It aims at understanding the relations between ultramafic and mafic-andesitic rock assemblages in order to place constraints on models for the evolution of the craton."^[7]