by Hanna Vauhkonen, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki and POLARIN Ambassador for the MOSQUITO project.

In July 2025, researchers from the University of Helsinki travelled to Nuuk and the remote Kobbefjord Research Station in Greenland as part of the MOSQUITO project, supported by POLARIN’s Transnational Access programme. Led by POLARIN Ambassador Hanna Vauhkonen, the team set out to map mosquito and virus communities and to test off-grid sequencing technologies under true Arctic field conditions.

Working with a fully mobile laboratory and offline bioinformatics tools, the researchers collected and sequenced mosquito samples despite flight disruptions, limited power supply, and the absence of traditional laboratory infrastructure. The field campaign revealed a rich and largely undocumented diversity of mosquito-associated viruses, highlighting the importance of local reference databases and ground-based observations for understanding Arctic ecosystems.

Read more in the MOSQUITO Ambassador blog by Hanna Vauhkonen, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki and POLARIN Ambassador for the MOSQUITO project.

MOSQUITO received funding from POLARIN’s first call for Transnational Access to Research Infrastructures.