On the retirement of Marcel Portanger
On 1 August 2026, after 40 years of service at Utrecht University, Marcel Portanger will take early retirement. Marcel joined IMAU in 1986 as a technician, but soon also took on ICT management responsibilities. In that role, he provided all staff with Apple computers, making IMAU one of the few institutes within Utrecht University to adopt them at the time. And we are still using them to everyone’s satisfaction! In those early years, Marcel mainly supported Hans Oerlemans’ research group. Together with his fellow technicians Wim Boot and later Henk Snellen, he designed instruments for climate measurements on glaciers and ice sheets, as well as new techniques for data transmission. This work took him to the Alps, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, and Antarctica.
These measurement campaigns were almost without exception successful and produced data for numerous scientific publications and PhD theses. This was due in large part to the thorough preparation, technical ingenuity, and remarkable improvisational skills of Marcel and his colleagues. For example, in 1991, using only limited resources, he managed to repair the tape recorder of a travelling journalist after it — along with the journalist — had fallen into a Greenlandic meltwater river. In Antarctica, the winch used to control a helium balloon failed, but Marcel managed to keep it operational in temperatures far below freezing. The freestanding four-legged mast used for operating climate stations in glacier melt zones has since been copied worldwide.
Marcel has also been of immeasurable value in education. Since the very beginning of the annual glaciology summer school in Karthaus in 1995, he has been responsible for the computers and local network, invariably finding quick solutions to almost any problem. The same is true today for the ever-expanding IMAU chemistry laboratory, for which he, together with his newer colleagues, designs, builds, and maintains equipment. He is equally quick to restore air-sampling equipment used in field campaigns far beyond IMAU, as illustrated by Carina van der Veen’s anecdote below. It is therefore fair to say that Marcel has been the quiet driving force behind countless IMAU research and teaching activities.
In addition to being a gifted ICT specialist and technician, Marcel is also a wonderful colleague, always ready to offer advice and able to remain calm in difficult fieldwork circumstances while searching for solutions. Since 2018, he has led the IMAU technical department, doing so in the manner characteristic of him: efficiently and with conviction. Together with Marcel, we have witnessed the university change over the past decades, and with increasing bureaucracy, much of the autonomy once enjoyed by technical and ICT staff has disappeared. It is therefore entirely understandable that he chose to make way a little earlier for the younger generation, but we will greatly miss his knowledge, craftsmanship, and leadership.
Michiel van den Broeke
In 2010 Marcel (with the other technicians Henk and Michel), became involved in the automation of the IMAU laboratory gas extraction systems: if I remember well, first the CO system, which was quite simple, and then the most complicated, the hydrogen isotope systeem, a worldwide unique extraction line to isolate molecular hydrogen from an air sample, which is then measured on an Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometer. It was the start of a great team that continued building the successful (mobile) methane systems that IMAU is renowned for.
In July 2021, during Covid, I was in Hamburg to install the methane sampling system on the 18th floor of the Geomatikum building, and I had unexpected problems with the electronics, that couldn't be solved remotely. Marcel grabbed the chance to leave the country for the first time since the first lockdown, and he drove to Hamburg to help me. After identifying the problem, the actual work to resolve it took less than a minute. However, to get his new iPhone to work he needed the rest of the day. Spending time together on field trips is always good for really getting to understand the instruments (and each other), and after the Hamburg visit Marcel became much more involved in the development of the lab systems. He also joined on more field trips to East-Germany, Hungary and Italy.
Carina van der Veen