The ISAC International Program Office is truly international with operations located at the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat in Stockholm, Sweden, the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, USA, and at the Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China.  The ISAC IPO is currently supported by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration. Recent ISAC activities have been supported by the International Arctic Science Committee, the Ocean University of China, Queen's University, Canada, and the U.S. Arctic Research Commission.

The IPO is responsible for coordinating the activities of the ISAC Science Steering group, facilitating collaboration among different arctic research programs, improving cooperation in arctic science and providing information about ISAC related and ISAC relevant initiatives. The IPO organizes meetings and workshops designed to address key scientific issues, including those relevant to platform and data sharing, and the IPO maintains a catalogue of programs that contribute to ISAC.

Executive Director, ISAC IPO

Maribeth Murray is the Executive Director of the ISAC IPO. Her research and publications are focused on the paleo and more recent records of impacts and feedbacks from climate to people, marine mammals and fisheries in the Arctic and the extension of climate records using novel retrospective datasets. Her work is interdisciplinary lacing emphasis on the integration of historical, archaeological, oceanographic, climatological and biogeochemical approaches to Arctic system science and marine ecosystem sustainability initiatives. She has served as Chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, as Director of the Human Dimensions of the Arctic System Core Office, as a member of the SEARCH Observing Change Panel, and as Editor of the Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska. She received a B.A. in Archaeology from Wilifrid Laurier University, an M.A. in Anthropology from Memorial University of Newfoundland and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from McMaster University. Since 1998 she has been on the faculty of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. She can be contacted at murray[at]arcticchange[dot]org.

Lize-Marié van der Watt has a background in socio-environmental history. She is the Project Manager at the ISAC international Project Office hosted by Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, Stockholm, Sweden. Previously she was involved in DST-NRF Centre for Invasion Biology's Antarctic Legacy Project, based at Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch. As part of this, she was the first humanities student in South Africa to be awarded a PhD based on polar research (2012). Lize-Marié's current research focuses on the relationships between politics, science and the environment in the national and transnational histories of polar environments. Through the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, she has been involved in the MISTRA Arctic Futures Project. She can be contacted at lizemarie[at]arcticchange[dot]org.