Thanks for your message. I rapidly went through your brochure, and what I can say is that your topic of choice is certainly interesting and potentially important, given the possible role of permafrost as long-term storage of old (and new) pathogens. For full disclosure, though, I am a quantitative ecologist, and in the paper mentioned in your message, I only lent some expertise on the mathematical modeling of infectious disease transmission. This is to say that I do not have much specific knowledge of the study region, nor do I possess the technical background to evaluate whether or to what extent your data collection strategy would be feasible. For instance, I know that surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy can target specific genetic sequences, thus plausibly being useful for pathogen detection, but understanding whether the whole process from data collection to sample analysis can be performed remotely is well beyond my paygrade, to say.

 

Therefore, if you are planning to produce a demonstration of your concept, I think you might want to consider asking for feedback from people working in the region (see e.g. the Nunataryuk project, https://nunataryuk.org/), as well as from some microbiology experts (not sure whether you have any at your institution, but they should not be hard to find elsewhere). 

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All the best for your project to you and your teammates,

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                                                                                                                                                              Lorenzo