GI News
Associate Professor of Physics Davis Sentman, Professor of Geophysics Eugene Wescott, Project Engineer Daniel Osborne, and the team of NASA/UAF scientists, pilots and technical specialists who captured the first color video footage of Sprites and Jets received the Laurel Award from Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine in January. Sprites and Jets are spectacular flashes of light reaching up to about 60 miles above thunderstorms.
Professor of Geophysics Glenn Shaw recently was elected to a four-year term with the Polar Research Board, established by the National Academy of Sciences in 1958 to provide independent advice to the federal government on matters of science and technology affecting public policy on environmental quality, natural resources, and other issues in polar regions. The board assists federal agencies in the development and maintenance of strong programs in polar research that promote national interests and international opportunities in the Arctic and the Antarctic.
Amanda Lynch, Assistant Professor of Atmospheric Science, has been selected as one of a group of five women scientists from throughout Alaska to be featured in a five-part series on the Alaska Public Radio Network. APRN plans to prepare five-minute segments on each scientist that will be aired on the Alaska News Nightly broadcast in August. The scientists also will be featured on five fifteen-minute segments to be aired on public radio stations throughout the state. Those segments later will be compiled on cassette and distributed along with a curriculum guide to school districts in Alaska by the Department of Education.
Robert Hunsucker, a senior consultant and professor emeritus, was selected from a nationwide pool of candidates to be the new editor of Radio Science, an international bimonthly journal that publishes papers on all aspects of electromagnetics. Hunsucker was appointed to the four-year position by the American Geophysical Union. Hunsucker also is an associate editor of The URSI Bulletin, a magazine published by the International Union of Radio Science. In January, Hunsucker became a Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., a status reserved for those who have had a long association with IEEE, and who have contributed knowledge through years of professional experience.
Roger Hansen joined the institute as State Seismologist and Research Professor of Geophysics this fall. He earned his B.S. ('75), M.S. ('77) and Ph.D ('81) degrees in geophysics from the University of California at Berkeley. Before coming to the institute, Hansen most recently worked at the University of Colorado physics department, at the U.S. Air Force Technical Application Center at Patrick AFB, Florida, and at the Norwegian Seismic Array near Oslo, Norway. His duties at the institute include operating the seismic network for the state and evaluating seismicity and earthquake-hazard potential. Prior to his arrival, Hansen specialized in seismology studies to discriminate between earthquakes and nuclear blasts, and on seismic-hazard analyses. Hansen is a member of the Seismological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union.
Florence Lee joined the institute as a test engineer for the Alaska Synthetic Aperture Radar Facility. Lee earned her B.S. degree from Fujen University in Taiwan ('73), and an M.S. in mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin ('79). Before joining the institute, Lee worked as a system engineer at the Taiwan National High Performance Computing Center, as a programmer analyst for El Paso County in Colorado Springs, as a software engineer at Intel in Portland, Oregon, as a system analyst for Mobil Oil in Dallas, Texas, and as a programmer analyst at Cray Research in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At the institute, she will assist with a major software upgrade of the ASF.
Ned Rozell joined the institute as a part-time science writer/proposal developer, replacing the part-time position held by Carla Helfferich. He earned a B.A. degree from UAF in journalism with a minor in English ('90), with extensive course work in natural resources management. Before coming to the institute, Rozell worked as a park ranger at Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, as a wildlands firefighter in Alaska, and as an oil recovery technician during the Prince William Sound oil spill. He also owned a lawn care business, for which he wrote a successful grant proposal to compost grass clippings.
Unique tools designed by institute researchers to cut and study sea ice were used to help the Fairbanks Ice Festival this winter. Electronic Technician Bill Zito, Senior Research Consultant Lew Shapiro, and Machinist Ned Manning helped festival volunteers excavate 100,000 pounds of ice needed for sculpture contests from a frozen quarry off Peger Road.
Zito used an underwater remotely controlled vehicle with a 150-meter umbilical cord to help volunteers observe the excavation process, clear ice formation, and other activity occurring under the ice in the freshwater quarry. The $50,000 submersible unit contains underwater cameras that sent images from under the ice to a television screen on the ice surface.
Shapiro and Manning cut blocks from the ice with a large, motorized, robotic chain saw designed at the institute to cut through sea ice off the coast of Barrow.
Eight professors gave free public lectures about their research this winter in Fairbanks and in Anchorage. The after-dinner seminars, presented in terms understandable to all ages, covered a variety of topics including the aurora, mountain ranges, earthquakes, glaciers, volcanoes, continental drift, and even arctic dinosaurs.
An average of about 150 people attended each lecture, despite winter's often inclement weather. The Geophysical Institute cosponsored the Fairbanks series with the Noel Wien Library, and the institute joined the Alaska Science and Technology Foundation and the Alaska Public Lands Information Center to present the series in Anchorage.
Weekly predictions about auroral activity over Alaska were established in March by Institute Director Syun Akasofu and Poker Flat Research Range Scientific Director Chuck Deehr. The predictions and accompanying diagrams, depicting low to high auroral activity throughout the week, are based on data gathered from a worldwide network of magnetometers by Programmer Analyst Li-her Lee.
The following institute employees recently passed yearly milestones of service:
5 years--Paul Bundschuh, Rick Danielson, Jim Desrochers, Bob Grove, Chris Larsen, Paul Layer, Judy Martsolf, Don Rice, Mitch Robinson, Charlotte Rowe, Donna Sandberg, Wei Sun and Dan Weimer.
10 years--Keith Echelmeyer, Greta Reynolds and Roger Smith.
15 years--John Benevento, Patricia Collins, Rick Guritz, Joan McInerney, Johni Meshell and John Olson.
20 years--Kate Barr and Cynthia Weatherby.
25 years--Kristina Ahlnaes and Tom Osterkamp.
The Alaska Space Academy, a week-long summer camp operated by the institute, which for two years brought space down to earth for students, will not open this summer due to a shortage of funds. Funding for the camp comes from a variety of sources including private and corporate donations, the camper $250 tuition charge, and educational contributors such as the Geophysical Institute, Alaska Space Grant, and the UAF College of Natural Science. The camp is expected to open again in 1996 under the new name, Alaska Space Ventures.
A new institute at UAF that promotes closer cooperation between university scientists and federal and state agencies selected Professor of Geophysics Gunter Weller to be its first director. The new Cooperative Institute of Arctic Research or CIFAR (pronounced "See Far") is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and is collocated with the UAF Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research, which Weller also directs.
As the latest of eight interdisciplinary partnerships in the U.S. to be forged between individual universities and NOAA, CIFAR will work closely with NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle on atmospheric research, environmental assessment, tsunami prediction, fisheries and sea ice research, climate dynamics, and numerical modeling.
Weller also recently was elected to the rank of Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the largest federation of scientists in the world. Each year the council elects members whose efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications are scientifically distinguished. Fellows were honored at the AAAS national meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, in February.
An international agreement between branches of the Japanese and the American governments to study global climate change, the destruction of the ozone layer, acid rain, and other problems with the earth's environment was signed on January 24 at the Geophysical Institute.
The signing of the agreement by Communications Research Laboratory Director General Kazuyoshi Yoshimura with the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, and Environmental Technology Laboratory Director Steven Clifford with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States, enables scientists from both countries to study the middle atmosphere using an array of Japanese instruments which are scheduled to be transported to Poker Flat Research Range during the next two years. The agreement was made about two weeks after Policy Director Jack Gibbons with the Office of Science and Technology in the White House met with Japanese Minister Tanaka to confirm the high-priority ranking of the international research project.
Former supervisor of the Geophysical Institute's Computer Resources Center, Morna Mellor, left the institute in fall 1994 after 23 years of service to accompany her husband, Jack Mellor, who accepted a new job with the Bureau of Mines and Reclamation in Lake Berryessa, California.
Mellor was first hired at the institute in 1970, as a data processing assistant with the data processing center.
She left the institute in 1972, returned to the data processing center as a scaling assistant and keypunch operator in 1973, and was promoted to the position of Computer Resources Center supervisor in 1987.
Mellor is responsible for the design, development and implementation of the accounting system used in the institute's business office.
To offset potential problems caused by earthquakes in Alaska, Machine Shop Supervisor Larry Kozycki is designing a small-scale kitchen on a large six-foot-square shake table that can demonstrate the effects of earthquakes at different magnitudes. When complete, the project will be taken to schools and used as a demonstration tool during public lectures.