Professor Noel D. Broadbent earned his B.A. in anthropology in 1968 at San Diego State University. He earned his Ph.D. in archaeology at Uppsala University in Sweden in 1979. He served as Senior Lecturer at the universities of Uppsala, Stockholm and Umeå, and between 1983 and 1989 was Director of the Center for Arctic Cultural Research at Umeå University. In 1990 he was hired by the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. to establish and manage the Arctic Social Sciences Program in the Division of Geosciences, a position he held until 1997. During this period he also led two expeditions to Antarctica and traveled extensively in the Arctic. In 1996 he was awarded the Chair of Archaeology at Umeå University. He joined the staff of the Department of Anthropology/Arctic Studies Center at the Smithsonian Institution in 2004. While at NSF he was awarded two Director’s Awards for Outstanding Program Management. He was voted a member of the Explorers Club and earned the Antarctica Service Medal from the U.S. Navy in 1995. In 2002 he was awarded The Hildebrand Prize from the Swedish Prehistoric Society for his outstanding contributions to Swedish and international research, the Secretary’s Research Prize by the Smithsonian Institution in 2011, and in 2013 was awarded the District of Columbia Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation. Noel has published over 100 scientific papers and 6 books on a wide range of subjects including scientific methods, health and education, and has carried out archaeological research in North America, Europe, Africa, Greenland, Svalbard and Antarctica.