UAF still doing more with less, amid budget cuts
BY TIM BRADNER Alaska’s state university system is proving itself adept at attracting re- search funding, particularly for sci- ence-based research that links to the state’s natural resource-based econo- my. About 1,000 people work in research across the University of Alaska system, most of it at the University of Alas- ka Fairbanks but also with important work being done at University of Alas- ka Anchorage and University of Alaska Southeast, which is based in Juneau. The university attracted $150 mil- lion in non-state funding for research in 2020; $146 million in 2019 and $140 million in 2018, UA president Pat Pitney said. Figures for 2021 aren’t yet avail- able but the upward trend continues. Most of the research money is in
competitive grants where Alaska must compete against other research uni- versities, Pitney said. Fairbanks is considered UA’s main research campus with its Geophysical Institute on the university’s west ridge where UAF’s other research institutes are clustered. This year marks the Geophysical Institute’s 75th anniver- sary. Anchorage is UA’s main student campus, but the University of Alaska Anchorage also engages in research, much of it in collaboration with the other campuses. “The university’s research is pret- ty broad, examples being volcanos, earthquakes and tsnunamis, both ba- sic research and monitoring for pub- lic safety,” said Marmian Grimes, spokesperson for University of Alaska Fairbanks.
“Climate research spans many disciplines to give a holistic view of changes in the Arctic and beyond. Parts of the university focus on interpreting and sharing data scientists gather so that it can be used in planning for in- frastructure and other uses,” she said. An example of work to support the mineral industry is the Hyperspectral Imaging Laboratory, or HyLab, at the Geophysical Institute, that was devel- oped by a team led by Prof. Anupma Prakash, now UAF’s Provost. HyLab uses laboratory and field spectrometer as well as an aircraft equipped with hyperspectral and ther- mal infrared imaging sensors used in airborne data acquisition. The sen- sors generate hundreds of images of material on the surface which are used to reconstruct the reflective pat - terns, which helps scientists identify
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The Alaska Miner
Fall 2021
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