Scott G. Borg

Borg graduated from Pomona College with a B.A. in geology, and earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Arizona State University, where his doctoral dissertation was titled Granitoids of Northern Victoria Land, Antarctica (Tectonics, Neodymium-isotopes, Geochemistry, Petrology, Strontium-isotopes).[3][4]

He began his career as a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley.[3] He later worked for the United States Department of Energy, and subsequently joined the staff of the National Science Foundation.[3][5] Between 2003 and 2016 he was director of the Division of Antarctic Sciences at the National Science Foundation,[5] and in 2016-17 he served as the acting Section Head for Antarctic Infrastructure and Logistics (AIL) within the National Science Foundation Division of Polar Programs.[3][6] In 2017, he began serving as associate director for geosciences at the National Science Foundation.[3][7][8]

Borg has participated in a total of six research expeditions to Antarctica, four of which he has led.[3] During a 1978–1979 expedition in which he participated, the Sagehen Nunataks were first visited, receiving their name from the Pomona Sagehens, athletic moniker of Borg's alma mater Pomona College.[9] During the same expedition, Borg named Tongue Peak, choosing the name from a tongue-shaped moraine on the peak.[10]

In 1994, Borg Bastion, the summit on Johns Hopkins Ridge, was named in his honor.[11] Borg has received the Samuel J. Heyman Medal from the Partnership for Public Service and been decorated with the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive.[6][12] In 2014, United States Representative Gerald Connolly read a statement of recognition into the Congressional Record in which he credited Borg with overseeing "the development of clean drilling technology that retrieved the first-ever pure water samples from an Antarctic lake a half mile below the surface of ice sheet ... [which] may enable researchers to understand what types of life can survive on other worlds".[12]