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'Modern-day Indiana Jones' leaves legacy to family, colleagues

Alberto Behar (left) and Andres Mora set up monitoring equipment on the Telica volcano in Leon, Nicaragua. (Photo courtesy of Andres Mora)
Alberto Behar (left) and Andres Mora set up monitoring equipment on the Telica volcano in Leon, Nicaragua. (Photo courtesy of Andres Mora)

Photo courtesy of Tom Wagner. Alberto Behar poses for a photo while studying the flow of glacial runoff in Greenland. (Photo courtesy of Tom Wagner)

From studying the way ice flows in Greenland to active volcanoes in Iceland and Hawaii, extreme environments were a passion for ASU research professor Alberto Behar.

His love for the scientific aspects of these environments inspired a new generation of researchers to study extreme environments. They now must carry Behar’s torch after his death on Jan. 9 in an airplane crash in Los Angeles.

Fascinated by nature and the universe, Behar created robots and instruments to allow scientists to hear and see things humans could not, ASU graduate student Jim Crowell said.

“It was incredible when I was in the field with him," Crowell said. "We would identify a problem together, and he would have me fix it. So, I would be racking my brain trying to fix it, and he would just stand back and let me do it. He really believed in learning by doing, and it was so cool that he had confidence in us too, as students or workers, to figure out a problem.”

Over the past three years, Crowell was able to learn from two different sides of Behar: the academic and the average person.

"I contacted him (to ask) if I could do a project with him and he agreed, and when I graduated, he hired me,” Crowell said. “We worked on countless projects, sending things to Greenland to measure the ice sheet, the glacial melting that is happening, to a sub glacial lake in Antartica, and we built drifters to go in the channels in Greenland, volcano monitors that are all over the place.”

Diana Roman (left), Alberto Behar and Andres Mora pose for a photo on the Telica volcano in Leon, Nicaragua. (Photo courtesy of Andres Mora) Diana Roman (left), Alberto Behar and Andres Mora pose for a photo on the Telica volcano in Leon, Nicaragua. (Photo courtesy of Andres Mora)

Fieldwork

Before coming to ASU, Behar spent 18 years with NASA building and designing instruments and robots for extreme environments.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton, director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, said she met Behar at a previous job before coming to ASU.

“I was collaborating with him and some other colleagues on a new way to monitor volcanoes, both from the gas emission and the visual point of view,” she said. “We had these wonderful low-cost, easily deployed instruments that we thought might really revolutionize the field.”

Working together in the field, Elkins-Tanton and Behar traveled to Iceland to install their instruments on the side of a volcano.

Before arriving in Iceland, Elkins-Tanton and Behar found out they couldn't work on the volcano they initially wanted to study, so they decided to work with one closer to the city and invite their families along for the trip.

"We ended up staying in a hotel with our families between our work and really got to know each other," she said.

“Alberto brought his whole family and so our families met and we spent time in the field together and had dinner together every night, and we just became really great friends,” she said.

Working alongside Behar was an absolute pleasure, because Behar was never upset and was always enthusiastic and easy going, she said.

“As I got to know him as a person, it became so clear how much he loved his family,” she said. “He just has these wonderful kids and his wife ... and I became friends and the two families had so much fun together in Iceland.”

ASU has a large hole to fill with the loss of Behar and his expertise, but there will never be a person quite like Behar, Tanton said.

“He was really unique in his temperament and his abilities,” she said. “So scientifically it isn’t a crippling blow but emotionally it is. He is just so greatly missed, because he was a great team member, and there are all kinds of projects we aren’t going to be able to do now.”

Alberto Behar (left) and Andres Mora set up monitoring equipment on the Telica volcano in Leon, Nicaragua. (Photo courtesy of Andres Mora) Alberto Behar (left) and Andres Mora set up monitoring equipment on the Telica volcano in Leon, Nicaragua. (Photo courtesy of Andres Mora)

More than a teacher

Andres Mora, a post-doctoral fellow at SESE, worked with Behar for close to 14 years and said he remembers how Behar always took time to see how he was doing.

“I remember one trip we had to go to Washington and he invited me out for my birthday and then the next day we would go speak to program managers,” Mora said.

Behar knew how to combine both down time and work time in a way that the feeling of seriousness or having to act a different way around him was never felt, he said.

"It was, 'Oh, here comes Alberto. Hey Alberto, I have this problem. How can we fix it?’, instead of worrying about what he was going to say," Mora said.

Mora said he hopes to one day step up and attempt to fill the role Behar played in the scientific community.

“I hope that someday I can be half as good as he was,” Mora said. “He was doing some major research and helping do a lot of research in the arctic, the polar regions and the oceans and he was leading research to develop underwater autonomous vehicles that would allow the exploration of never visited subglacial lakes in Antartica.”

However, Mora said the hole Behar leaves will never really be filled.

“Right now, off the top of my head, I don’t know who will be able to step up and take on that role," he said. "He was such an inspiration that I hope one day that I can become something as good as he was. It’s hard still to imagine that he won’t be there to suggest to you how to do certain things or what mistakes not to make. It’s just crazy.”

Inspiring others

Behar's son and daughters are his biggest achievement and legacy, Mora said. He was dedicated to them and to his wife, Mary.

“I would say his major achievement was being a fantastic father,” he said. “An inspiring one that would always help his kids, his wife in the good times and bad and was an inspiring figure from every angle you would see him.”

As for scientific achievements, Mora said there are so many that it's hard to say what Behar would call his biggest.

“I think one of his major achievements was to get students confident in their abilities but also to think big and know they can do great things,” Mora said.

From exploring the greatest depths of the oceans, to standing on active volcanoes, Behar was not only a scientist but an adventurer.

His legacy in the fields of extreme environments will carry on through his students, like Crowell and Mora, who both said they learned so much about not only science but also life through Behar.

“He’s basically a modern-day Indiana Jones,” Crowell said. “When you think of the most interesting man in the world, that was Alberto.”

CORRECTION: Due to a reporting error, a previous version of this article incorrectly stated the names and gender of Behar's three children. This version has been updated with the correct information.

 

Reach the reporter at jshanco2@asu.edu or follow @joey_hancock on Twitter.

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