Fulbright Forums Spring and Summer 2026
Fulbright Iceland
The Fulbright Forums continued throughout the spring and summer, giving grantees an opportunity to share their research, projects and experiences with the Fulbright community and the public.
On February 23, a special Fulbright Iceland 69th Anniversary Forum was held where Guðmundur Steingrímsson, Ph.D. student in EnvironmentalSciences at the University of Iceland and a 2025 Visiting Student Researcher at Yale University, gave a fascinating presentation titled Saving the World in a Circle, focused on his research into the circular economy and his experience at Yale.
Guðmundur Steingrímsson at the 69th Anniversary Forum
On May 7th, five Fulbright Fellows and four Fulbright Scholars presented their work. The projects reflected the wide range of research carried out by U.S. grantees in Iceland, covering subjects including inclusion in Icelandic schools, avian malaria, equine-assisted services and Icelandic rootless cones as terrestrial analogues of Martian paleoenvironments.
Our final Fulbright Forum of the academic year was held on August 10th, where the last three U.S. Fulbright-NSF Scholars of the 2025-2026 cohort presented their Arctic research in the fields of biology and geology and reflected on their time in the country.
Presentations showed how Fulbright projects can connect directly with a wide variety of contemporary challenges and/or debates. One example was Isabella Chittumuri’s work on geospatial risk analysis in Hornafjörður, where she combined climate data and road incident records to develop a spatial-temporal model aimed at strengthening climate resilience in the region.
On a different subject, Dr. Irina Filina’s presentation focused on the ongoing geological debate on conflicting tectonic hypotheses for the formation of Iceland. During her summer in Iceland, Dr. Filina collected samples and data for further analysis to test Iceland’s tectonic affiliation in order to assess the recently proposed hypothesis on the new continent of Icelandia.
Recordings of Fulbright Forums are available on the Fulbright Iceland YouTube channel.
Dr. Irina Filina at the August Forum