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On March 22nd, Steven Goderis, a PhD student at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, became the second recipient of the Antarctica InBev-Baillet Latour Fellowship Award. The official awarding ceremony took place at headquarters of the International Polar Foundation in Brussels and was attended by representatives of both the InBev-Baillet Latour Funds and the IPF.

During a ceremony at the Princess Elisabeth Station, Sven Kerremans (Laborelec) and Jean Chalon (Schneider Electric) symbolically handed over the keys of the station's technical core to Alain Hubert, President of the International Polar Foundation. The event celebrated the completion of the final systems tests. The Princess Elisabeth Station is now officially the first research station ever to solely operate on renewable energies!

Polar Quest is the new educational project from the International Polar Foundation, supported by the "Actieplan Wetenschapscommunicatie" of the Flemish Government.

The International Polar Foundation was invited to be part of the Belgian pavilion to showcase Belgium’s involvement in sciences related to better understanding our climate. Working with Atelier Brückner (Stuttgart), the IPF has devised an LED-lit giant ice cube to draw visitors into the world of Polar Regions, polar science and climate change, with the Princess Elisabeth Station as the main feature.

Dr. Elie Verleyen (Laboratory of Protistology and Marine Ecology at the University of Ghent), laureate of the InBev-Baillet Latour Antarctica Prize 2008 organised by the  InBev-Baillet Latour Fund and the International Polar Foundation, will be flying to Usteinen and the Princess Elisabeth Station on the 3rd of January 2010. He will be staying in Antarctica for a period of five weeks to carry out field work.

On 9 December 2009 at the University of Liège, Belgium, the IPF participated in the annual meeting of three Belgian Antarctic research projects: AMBIO, ANTAR-IMPACT & BELDIVA.

From the 10th to the 12th of November, the IPF attended the DAMOCLES (Developing Arctic Modeling and Observing Capabilities for Long-term Environmental Studies) symposium held in Brussels, Belgium. The symposium convened researchers from all across Europe as well some from the United States, Canada, Russia, China and Japan to discuss and debate preliminary results they have obtained under the European-funded Arctic research project.

At a briefing on Friday October 16th at the headquarters of the IPF, the new season for the Princess Elisabeth Station officially started! Fourty-four people will take part in BELARE this season, staying between one and five months at Utsteinen. The objective for this year is to finalize the tests of all the technical systems of the station. Moreover, a new satellite antenna will be installed next to the station.

On October 5th, 2009, a delegation of Swiss members of parliament and representatives from the Swiss Embassy in Brussels visited the International Polar Foundation (IPF) headquarters in Brussels. The delegation's visit took place in the general framework of "aiming at zero emissions" and enabled the Swiss delegation to gain more insight into the offerings of the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica as a research station.

The International Polar Foundation will partake in the Shanghai World Expo 2010 as part of the Belgian and European pavilion. With this year's theme being "Better Cities, Better Lives", the space allocated to the IPF will exhibit Belgium's and Europe's involvement in finding solutions to mitigate and adapt to climate change.