About us

Drift+Noise Polar Services GmbH is a spin-off company of the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). The founders look back on more than 15 years of operational experience in polar regions.

Drift+Noise is fully committed to assisting stakeholders acting in polar waters with operational ice information from models and satellites, by leveraging technology from polar research, geophysics, and remote sensing.

We are looking for early-adopters in the marine and polar market who are presently investing in the digitization of their operations. We integrate Agile and DevOps practices to ensure the high quality of our operational services; concepts such as code revision, test driven development, and continuous integration are used in our daily workflow.

Key users of our services include icebreakers like RV Polarstern (the German national icebreaker operated by the AWI) and RSV Nuyina (chartered by the Australian Antarctic Division), expedition cruise companies such as Ponant, Hapag Lloyd Cruises, and Lindblad as well as Marine Technology and Engineering Organisations like the Hamburg Ship Model Basin (HSVA).

Video Portraits of Drift+Noise Polar Services

Portrait by the Copernicus Marine Service

Bremen's Buten un Binnen accompanied our team while we were supporting the research icebreaker Polarstern in Antarctica. (in German)

The team members are:

Lasse Rabenstein

Business Development and Consulting

Lasse holds a PhD in geophysics and is founder of the first generation. He takes care of the sustainable growth of the company and consults polar expeditions on-site and remotely.

Paul Cochrane

Development and Operations

Paul holds a PhD in physics and is a software developer at heart. He manages the devops processes in the company.

Hannah Jansen

Administration and Sales

Hannah holds a M.Sc. in Sustainability Economics and Management and joined us in 2022. She is responsible for the coordination of our different projects and takes care of administrational matters and sales in our Bremen office.

H. Jakob Bünger

Research and Operational Field Support

Jakob holds a PhD in physics with a focus on sea ice. He coordinates research and consults clients in the field.

Henning Weidenhöfer

Software Development

Henning recently joined our IcySea development team. He has two decades of experience in developing web applications and digital solutions.

Jonathan Bahlmann

Software Engineering

Jonathan studied geoinformatics and joined our team as a software engineer. He is focused on improving our remote sensing-based sea-ice information products.

Bernhard Schmitz

Software Development

Bernhard is a geophysicist and professional software engineer. He is the driving force behind the IcySea progressive web application.

Taib Hayat

Development and Operations

Taib is a geographer and a web developer. At Drift+Noise he focuses mainly on backend programming and devops processes.

Advisory board members are:

Panagiotis Kountouris

Scientist at ECMWF

Panagiotis is one of our co-founders and is currently employed by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. His expertise includes remote sensing, model data processing, and scientific software development.

Matthias Verbeke

Entrepreneur

Matthias is one of our co-founders. He serves on the board of directors of Open Analytics and assists Drift+Noise in legal and regulatory matters.

Bjørn Kay

Master Mariner and Ice Advisor

Bjørn is employed by the Svendborg International Maritime Academy and is a master mariner, ice instructor, ice advisor, and member of the International Ice Charting Group Task Team 8.