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Timeline

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Bridging research & community

 

IANRE Circumpolar Connections

January

Across the North, communities face challenges in building resilient and sustainable food systems due to harsh climates, remote geographies and rapidly changing environmental conditions. The Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension at UAF began a monthly series, which runs through April, to engage researchers, students and community members in dialogue about food and agricultural challenges throughout the Arctic region. Sessions featured a 30-minute presentation followed by open discussion, encouraging audience participation and interdisciplinary connection.

 

New planetarium’s name revealed

February

A decades-long dream of a planetarium at the University of Alaska Museum of the North comes to fruition this spring when the 65-seat facility opens to the public in late April. The planetarium will be named for Walt and Marita Babula, the formerly anonymous donors whose $7.4 million donation funded the construction. The couple’s gift is the single largest ever to the University of Alaska from living individuals. See more on pages 8–9

COAST-X, Institute of Northern Engineering

March

The COAST-X mission began its 1,500-mile snowmachine trip from Bethel to Utqiaġvik along Alaska’s western and northern coasts, documenting environmental change. Led by UAF researchers, the project partners with coastal communities, combining field measurements and local knowledge to better understand changing Arctic coastlines and impacts.

Science Potpourri

April

Designed to spark children’s curiosity about science, Science Potpourri has been a K-12 outreach tradition at the ���ϳԹ��� since the 1980s. This free, all-ages event features hands-on activities, science shows, liquid-nitrogen ice cream, scavenger hunts and educational crafts in a safe, fun environment for young learners.

UAF Research Facts and Figures

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Where UAF Research Happens

UAF research is place-based, student-driven and mission-critical to Alaska and the Arctic. With over 90 research field facilities and locations, UAF research is happening across the state of Alaska in many impactful ways.

Catch a glimpse of some of the research facilities here at UAF. View and interact with the map for a comprehensive list of facilities in Alaska.

 

Did you know?

 

ASF

The Alaska Satellite Facility will soon be storing much more data, this time from the new U.S.-India NISAR satellite. NISAR will send about 35 petabytes annually to ASF. That’s more in one year than ASF has stored from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellite, ASF’s most- popular dataset, over that satellite’s 11-year lifetime.

1 petabyte = 1,000 terabytes = 1 million gigabytes

Modern personal computers typically have 256 gigabytes to several terabytes of storage.

LARS

We have muskoxen: The Large Animal Research Station is the only research facility in the world with a captive herd of muskoxen.  LARS houses a combination of muskoxen, reindeer and wood bison.

IANRE

Longest-running field station: Fairbanks Experiment Farm contains the longest continuously running ���ϳԹ��� observation station in Alaska. The experiment farm began recording the ���ϳԹ��� on July 1, 1911, 115 years ago.

TOOLIK

Coldest field site: Toolik temps dropped to -45.3  ̊C on Jan, 5, 2026. The lowest temperature recorded at Toolik was -57.6 ̊C on Jan. 26, 1989.

 

UAF is one of only a handful of institutions in the country that can claim the triple crown status of Land, Sea and Space Grant Institution.

Here on Troth Yeddha’

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Amped up about AMPPS! Student-driven project flies high on Poker Flat launch

By Rod Boyce

Inside a 58-foot-tall two-stage NASA sounding rocket packed with engines, fuel and a large payload for the primary NASA aurora mission, a dainty bit of electronics the size of a tuna can was hitching a ride.

That small package was an electron spectrometer built by a team of University of Alaska Fairbanks students led by Quetzal Larrick, who goes by “Q” to most. He’s the lab manager at the Space Systems Engineering Program of the ���ϳԹ��� of Engineering and Mines. The program is also part of UAF Alaska Space Grant, which is part of the Geophysical Institute.

The 3D-printed device is called AMPPS, the Additively Manufactured Plastic Plasma Spectrometer.

AMPPS was born in the summer of 2018 when a retired NASA physicist visited the ���ϳԹ��� of Engineering and Mathematics Space Systems Lab and  introduced the idea of building a small plasma spectrometer to detect individual electrons that cause the aurora and to measure their energies. Larrick was a sophomore.

It didn’t become an integrated instrument project, however, until the winter of 2023-24.

“That's after I finished my thesis, which was about the power supply for AMPPS,” Larrick said. “That gave us the foundation to finally think of it as a whole instrument called AMPPS instead of as several separate projects.”

CEM students joined the AMPPS effort two years ago: Mary Bolling, Ayman Eltahir, Jonathan Rayborn and Bruce Smith.

“They are still working with me now,” Larrick said. “We didn't have all the pieces of AMPPS working together as a unit until late summer 2025.”

Then came a surprise announcement in the fall of 2025: the chance for AMPPS to piggyback on an aurora rocket launch out of Poker Flat Research Range. AMPPS went up Feb. 9 on the Black and Diffuse Aurora Science Surveyor mission, led by Marilia Samara of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

“I'm thankful to Marilia Samara and the people from Goddard for welcoming us into the project and believing in the AMPPS team,” Larrick said. “And I'm thankful for the UAF faculty who have supported my work over the last few years: Denise Thorsen, Don Hampton and Mark Conde.”

And how does he feel now that AMPPS has flown?

“It feels great,” he said. “This was a really exciting and lucky result from a stressful situation.”

REFERENCES:

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A grad student’s classroom activity builds
confidence across backgrounds

By Kat Reichert

UAF graduate student Anne Moore turned classroom innovation into a published chapter in Communication Activities for the Classroom. The chapter, titled “The Impromptu Construction Wheel,” is available through Springer Nature’s Link platform.

For Moore, a master’s student in professional communication in the ���ϳԹ��� of Liberal Arts, the publication is rooted in her life story. Born and raised in the mountains of Guatemala, she has lived in six cities, traveled to 40 countries and has long been engaged in work with historically marginalized communities across the United States.

Those experiences, together with her move to the U.S. in 2020 and eventual settling in Alaska, sharpened her awareness of how culture, law and policy shape everyday communication and classroom dynamics. “As a foreign-born professor, I noticed the dynamics in the classroom post-COVID felt awkward, and most of the students were shy,” Moore said.

She also saw how a prolonged period without face-to-face interaction had affected students’ confidence and sense of connection.

Her response was a fast-paced, low-stakes activity that gets students building speeches in real time. Instructors and students brainstorm potential topics, ranging from campus issues to playful prompts like whether cereal counts as soup, then load them into an online “wheel” and spin to receive a randomized assignment. Students either develop a barebones impromptu speech
in just a few minutes or build a full 5–7 minute persuasive presentation to deliver in a later class.

“The primary goal of this activity is to promote creativity, address glossophobia [the intense fear of public speaking], apply the techniques of persuasion and nonverbal communication via an impromptu speech, and consider the role of dramaturgy in public speaking,” Moore writes.

REFERENCES:
Spin, Speak, Connect: How a Grad Student’s Classroom Activity Builds Confidence Across Backgrounds

UAMN Planetarium

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By Rod Boyce

A decades-long dream of a planetarium at the University of Alaska Museum of the North comes to fruition this spring when the ���ϳԹ��� opens the new 65-seat facility to the public.

The planetarium is named for Walt and Marita Babula, the formerly anonymous donors whose $7.4 million donation funded the construction. The couple’s gift is the single largest ever to the University of Alaska from living individuals.

The project itself is a testament to the lasting impact of philanthropy in our community, said Mike Sfraga, UAF’s interim chancellor.

“Aspirations and grand visions like our new planetarium can sometimes seem out of reach,” he said. “We are so grateful for the partnership that has
enabled Walt and Marita’s vision to be realized and create this extraordinary place that will educate and inspire Alaskans and museum visitors for generations to come.”

The planetarium is a collaboration between the museum and the UAF Geophysical Institute. The addition to the museum’s west side will provide a new forum for highlighting UAF’s research and Alaska’s cultures.

The Babulas expressed their vision in a written statement.

“Most importantly, it will enable space science education opportunities for K-12 and higher education students,” the couple wrote. “We also envision the planetarium as a place that will spark the curiosity of Alaskans and visitors from around the globe about our Alaska culture and vast universe.”

The 5,700-square-foot planetarium will include an 11-meter dome, two high-resolution projectors, four image-generation computers and theater-quality sound.

In addition to being a draw for visitors to Interior Alaska, the planetarium will also serve prekindergarten-12th grade school groups, UAF students and faculty, and host special events.

REFERENCES:
Coming soon: Out-of-this-world experience at new UAF planetarium 

From the Field

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R/V Sikuliaq sails south for the winter. Way south.

By Jeff Richardson, ���ϳԹ��� of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences

After spending much of its first decade as a platform for Arctic science, the research vessel Sikuliaq is focusing on a different type of polar research in early 2026. The ship operated in Antarctica for the first time this year after arriving at the southernmost continent in mid-January.

The 261-foot ice-capable vessel, which is owned by the U.S. National Science Foundation and has been operated by the UAF ���ϳԹ��� of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences since 2014, supported three Antarctic research projects that were previously hosted by vessels that no longer have contracts with NSF. The charter for the research vessel Laurence M. Gould expired in 2024, and NSF ended its lease with the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer last year.

R/V Sikuliaq’s introduction to the region highlighted both the excitement and challenges of remote Antarctic science. The Weddell Sea, where the initial research projects were conducted, was ice-free last January. When the ship arrived this year, the area was blanketed in multiyear ice, preventing R/V Sikuliaq from reaching a research site on Seymour Island. The ship and science team adapted their plans so they could reach it later.

“We’re at the mercy of Mother Nature pretty much anytime we’re at sea,” R/V Sikuliaq Marine Superintendent Doug Baird said.

R/V Sikuliaq is rated to navigate ice up to 2.5 feet thick. At one station early in the cruise, a research team measured the ice in part of the Weddell Sea at 7.5 feet, buried beneath 18 inches of snow.

“There are some icebreakers that could get through it, but very few,” Baird said.

Those conditions caused some delays before research could resume. A coring project on Antarctica’s Seymour Island is for a study of the effects of a mass extinction event during the Cretaceous Period. While those scientists were ashore, a team in the Weddell Sea studied how changing sea ice and meltwater are affecting the ecosystem of the Southern Ocean.

The final cruise aimed to collect and evaluate a species of ascidians (sea squirts) along the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula using a combination of diving, remote-operated vehicle work, and small-scale trawling.

Katrin Iken, a marine biology professor at UAF, assisted with the collection process, which included scuba dives up to 130 feet deep. She did similar work in Antarctica as a Ph.D. student, postdoctoral researcher, and most recently in 2019 as a CFOS professor.

“It’s known that this species produces metabolites that have been proven effective against cancer,” Iken said.

“There are a bunch of different questions being asked during this cruise about the compounds they produce and how local environmental conditions affect them.”

R/V Sikuliaq’s roughly three-month stay in Antarctica sparked uncommon interest, Baird said.

“It’s opened us up to people who follow the Antarctic science program, and opened them up to people who follow R/V Sikuliaq,” he said. “It’s been a nice blend of two different audiences.”

Poker Flat Launches

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By Rod Boyce

Three missions with four rockets were sent skyward in an unusually short timespan at Poker Flat Research Range. That's a big success for the Poker crew on a much tighter schedule than in previous years at the range north of Fairbanks.

The first went up Jan. 30 and was followed by a week of scheduled downtime. The second launched Feb. 9, and a two-rocket mission went up the next day.

"The team at Poker Flat is amazing, and I’m proud to be part of it,” said Kyle McAllen, deputy director of Poker Flat and of the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program. “We were able to launch four rockets in just four days of launch opportunities. And three of those launches occurred in just two days."

The ���ϳԹ��� Geophysical Institute owns Poker Flat, located at Mile 30 Steese Highway, and operates it under a contract with Wallops Flight Facility, which is part of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

This is McAllen’s first season leading Poker Flat, but he has been associated with the range for many years.

Before joining the Geophysical Institute, McAllen managed NASA’s $34 million Heliophysics Strategic Technology Office at Wallops in Virginia. He has also served as launch and test director at Wallops, where he led a diverse portfolio of missions including International Space Station commercial resupply, National Reconnaissance Office orbital launches, Department of Defense testing and evaluation, Navy Fleet Forces training exercises, and suborbital sounding rocket missions from Wallops Island and Poker Flat.

“Poker Flat is important to the nation, the state and especially to the Fairbanks region, and I know how much this facility means to the community,” McAllen said. “Rocket launches are quite a spectacle, and we enjoy not only the science they provide but also the joy they bring to those watching.”

REFERENCES:

Researcher Spotlight

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Meet Institute of Arctic Biology postdoctoral fellow Jessica Johnson

By Rod Boyce

Jessica Johnson, a postdoctoral fellow and former doctoral student in biological sciences, studies how tiny chemical clues in the body can reveal what people eat.

Johnson’s research at the UAF Institute of Arctic Biology’s Center for Alaska Native Health Research focuses on stable isotopes, naturally occurring forms of elements that can act like dietary fingerprints. By studying these subtle signals, she hopes to better measure how much added sugar and animal protein people actually consume and to compare those findings with what people report in large health studies.

Her work aims to improve the accuracy of nutrition research and deepen understanding of how diet shapes health.

Johnson’s most recent work shows that a chemical marker in the body can reliably reveal how much added sugar and how many sugar-sweetened drinks a person consumes. The marker works in people of different ages, sexes, races and diets.

The findings were published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in late 2025. Johnson is the research paper’s lead author.

“We now have an objective way to measure a person’s intake of added sugar or sugar-sweetened beverages,” Johnson said.

That information can then be associated with rates of obesity and chronic disease to improve research.

Johnson earned her bachelor’s degree in biology in 2011 from Tufts University, located in the greater Boston area where she grew up. She completed a master’s degree in oceanography and coastal sciences in 2017 at Louisiana State University, where she  studied the food web and ecology of Gulf Coast salt marshes.

REFERENCES:
Enjoying that soda? New research can reveal how much you drink 

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GI Graduate Student Profile, Gabby Nowak

Meet Geophysical Institute graduate student researcher Gabrielle Nowak

By Rod Boyce

Graduate student researchers are the future of science and an integral part of our UAF Geophysical Institute family.

So let’s meet one of them.

Here’s Gabrielle “Gabby” Nowak from the Geophysical Institute’s Space Physics Group. Her advisor is assistant professor Doğacan Ozturk.

 

Q: Where are you from? Tell us about that place.

Gabby: I’m originally from West Michigan. I grew up in Grand Haven, which is a small beach town on the shore of Lake Michigan.

Q: Tell us about your education path. Where were you before coming to UAF? What stage are you at in your graduate program?
Gabby: I attended Central Michigan University as an undergrad, where I majored in physics with an astronomy concentration and minored in mathematics and computer science. As a first-generation college student, I was a part of the McNair Scholars Program and had the opportunity to participate in research studying the spectra of Be-type star disks. As a graduate student at UAF, I changed gears from astronomy to space physics. I am currently a Ph.D. candidate.

Q: Tell us about your general field of research. What do you find interesting about it?

Gabby: A major subset of space physics work has to do with investigating Earth’s magnetic field and its interaction with the solar wind. Space ���ϳԹ��� can impact aspects of everyday life — from communications, GPS navigation and power outages to aurora forecasting. This is what I found most exciting about space physics and encouraged my decision to transition from astronomy. The work still feels exploratory and large-scale but is also more tangible and human-focused.

Q: Why did you choose UAF?

Gabby: I was initially attracted to UAF because of the location. I’ve always enjoyed winter sports, and Fairbanks is a prime location for cross-country skiing. Speaking with some of the physics graduate students is what cemented my decision, however. Thanks to discussions with graduate students over Zoom and email, I was able to get a sense of the university and department culture, which helped me decide that UAF was a good fit for me.

REFERENCES:

Research Group Showcase

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Center for Alaska Native Health Research

The Center for Alaska Native Health Research in the UAF Institute of Arctic Biology was established in 2001 through an infrastructure grant from the National Institutes of Health as part of the Institutional Development Award Program, which supports the development of Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence in states that receive lower levels of NIH funding such as Alaska.

CANHR’s COBRE funding has expired, but the center is sustained by independent research programs that receive federal funding from multiple agencies, including the NIH, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The center also receives strategic initiative funding from the state to continue to grow its research programs at UAF and statewide. CANHR’s mission is to increase our state’s research capacity and community engagement in research to improve Alaska Native health and to apply the knowledge gained from research to improve health for all Alaskans.

The program was founded with a focus on understanding what biological and behavioral factors contribute to the higher rates of some chronic diseases among Alaska Native people.

 

Subject Matter Areas

 

Chronic disease

Basic science and intervention research to improve diet, nutrition and physical activity. Projects draw on community strengths and values to promote food security, healthy eating and physical activity among families and communities.

Mental health and suicide prevention

Exploratory and intervention research to reduce risk and increase resilience, social connectedness and well-being. Projects draw on community and cultural strengths to increase protective factors such as social connectedness, healthy leadership and having meaning and purpose. 

 

Major Innovations and Advancements

Working to improve young people’s mental health and well-being

This innovation led to the establishment of the Qungasvik (Tools for Life) intervention as the nation’s first Alaska Native evidence-based practice showing impacts for improving mental health outcomes in 251 young people.

DoD use of CANHR research with Alaska Native communities

This innovation led to the development of a new initiative in CANHR, the Military Health Research Consortium, that applies research knowledge and methods from prior projects in a military service setting. 

Appointments & Honors

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Publication Highlight

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Peyuluk: Volcano

By Rod Boyce

One of Alaska's most active volcanoes has a starring role in a new school curriculum designed to teach students not only about volcano science and volcano hazards but also about the life of the people who live near the occasionally restless giant.

“Peyuluk: Volcano” provides lessons and materials about the community of Perryville and its looming volcano, Mount Veniaminof. “Peyuluk” is the word for volcano in the Sugt'stun language of the region’s Sugpiaq/Alutiiq people.

The curriculum represents a months-long collaboration among Perryville residents, ���ϳԹ��� Geophysical Institute volcanology researchers, the Alaska Volcano Observatory and the Education Outreach Office
of the Geophysical Institute.

“Peyuluk: Volcano” includes a teacher manual and lesson plans, student guides, basic volcano information for teachers, video, and Sugpiaq language pronunciation guide.

Perryville sits 22 miles south of Veniaminof, a 8,225-foot stratovolcano with a 6-mile diameter summit caldera. It is currently at rest but has been intermittently active, with its most recent eruption in early 2021 producing small ash plumes and lava within its summit caldera. A larger eruption in 2018 sent lava fountains and ash several miles into the air.

“Peyuluk: Volcano” is part of a collaborative project funded by the National Science Foundation through its Prediction of and Resilience against Extreme Events, or PREEVENTS, program. The $2.56 million five-year grant to several Geophysical Institute researchers affiliated with the volcano observatory was one of 15 funded through the program.

REFERENCES: