The world's coldest, iciest, driest, windiest and highest continent is the focus for Tauranga's Sophia Rauzi.

Sophia, who is doing a doctorate in Earth Science at the University of Waikato, received an Antarctica New Zealand Doctoral Scholarship which provides $20,000 in funding over two years.

Originally from Texas, Tauranga has been Sophia's home since April.

Sophia's interest in Antarctica stems from a love for science involving the oceans.

'I always wanted to study marine geochemistry and so, this is like an outlet of that.

'Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are very unique parts of the world that play unique roles like the carbon cycle and carbon sequestration out of the atmosphere. It's a really interesting and important place to study.”

An interest in Antarctica, particularly its impact on carbon levels, is something relatively new for Sophia.

'I have been looking into Southern Ocean stuff, like Southern Ocean carbon cycling for about a year now but that was more background research,” she says.

'I started working with Terry Issons here in New Zealand and we're working on marine clay formation which is a carbon flux and then combined them as two interests into this Southern Ocean Marine Clay project.”

The research will explore the effects of carbon dioxide fluxes in and out of the world's most important carbon sink, the Southern Ocean, which takes up about 10 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions produced by humans.

These effects include carbon incorporated into marine organisms' skeletons and when the organisms die, the carbon can transported down to the deep sea where it is buried as calcium carbonate.

Sophia can't wait for the research to start.

'There's an unconstrained carbon flux that we're trying to quantify, and this is a novel approach that I'm excited about. There's more silica in the Southern Ocean sediments than anywhere else in the world, and this is an opportunity to learn how this process works,” she says.

Sophia Rauzi and Antarctica NZ CEO Sarah Williamson.

Antarctica NZ CEO Sarah Williamson is excited about how this scholarship has and continues to aid the scientific community.

'So we get a great deal of interest in this scholarship from early career scientists - lot of the funding is orientated towards that. Early career scientists are building their histories and reputations and it can be hard to get a foot in the door,” Sarah says.

'Sophia was one of the applications that came through and has been subsequently rewarded which is wonderful.”

Sarah says Sophia's research is essential in light of global warming.

'The more we know about carbon sinks, the more we can understand and predict what is going to happen to the world around us with regards to climate change – Sophia's research is a really important piece of work.”