drs. Floris van den Berg

About Floris van den Berg

Floris van den Berg is a general practitioner and expedition doctor, but above all a traveler and full-time dreamer. During his medical studies, he founded an event company and started a photography studio, only to realize that his true passion lay close to medicine, in the art of healing. As an expedition doctor, Floris worked on ships in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, guided the world record Antarctic swim (Bhakti Sharma, 2015), worked in the jungles of Belize and Guatemala, in remote areas of Nepal & Cambodia, and successfully led a group to the summit of Kilimanjaro twice. As an Advanced Wilderness Life Support (AWLS) instructor, he teaches doctors how to provide medical care in extreme environments. Always in search of ‘the extremes’, he left in November 2015 for 13 months to a remote Antarctic research station. As the first Dutchman, he spent 400 days at Concordia Station, 9 months physically cut off from the outside world, 3 months of darkness, and temperatures down to -80°C.

In a small (Franco-Italian) wintering group of only 12 people, he conducts research for the European Space Agency (ESA) on the physical and psychological effects of isolation, darkness, and lack of oxygen. Fully autonomous and without the option for outside help, in preparation for future long-duration space missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. What does isolation do to a person? What is the perception of time in 100 days without sunlight? How do people function in a small group and what influence does this have on group dynamics?