GI Press Releases
On the centennial of the Novarupta eruption – a cataclysmic event that created the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes in southwest Alaska – a group of 19 students and scientists will embark on the summer’s first hike to the massive volcano. 
Fairbanks, Alaska— Ed Bueler, Associate Professor of Mathematics at UAF and member of the Geophysical Institute glaciers group, will travel to Germany later this month to present on the Parallel Ice Sheet Model, referred to as PISM. The Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany will the host the first Euro-PISM workshop.
The Science for Alaska Lecture Series will host two public lectures in Anchorage to conclude its 2012 season.
A new $1.8 million National Science Foundation grant will help the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute expand a program that encourages Native middle-school students to pursue science and technology careers.
On Saturday, Feb. 18 at 8:41 p.m. Alaska time, scientists launched a NASA sounding rocket from Poker Flat Research Range into a brilliant aurora display. The rocket mission, designed to gather information on space weather conditions that affect satellite communications, was a success.
University of Alaska Fairbanks professor emeritus Davis “Dave” Sentman has been elected to the 2012 class of fellows for the American Geophysical Union.
Scientists are now at Poker Flat Research Range north of Fairbanks waiting for acceptable conditions for the launch of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration sounding rocket.
Governor Sean Parnell issued an executive proclamation stating Feb. 11, 2012 as Alaska Inventors Day. In celebration of the proclamation, the Alaska Inventors Alliance and the Alaska Patent & Trademark Resource Center will host a daylong event on Saturday, Feb. 11 at the Geophysical Institute where the public can learn about resources available to local inventors, tour the GI Machine and Electronics Shops and meet with Interior mayors and local inventors.
Located at the top of the globe, beneath the Arctic Ocean, the Amerasia Basin is poorly understood. This large depression in the ocean floor was created during the Mesozoic Era, the age of the dinosaurs, but how the tectonic plates shifted to open up and create the basin remains a puzzle. Professor Bernard Coakley and a 12-person crew currently aboard the research vessel Marcus G. Langseth hope to find the fossil plate boundaries associated with the basin and recreate the birth of this mysterious feature.
Fairbanks, Alaska—After a vigorous vetting process, the University of Alaska Fairbanks selected Robert “Bob” McCoy as the Geophysical Institute’s new director. McCoy will be the seventh scientist to the hold the post since the institute was established in Fairbanks in 1946.
