Celebrating the history of AEC
Former and current Alaska Earthquake Center staff came together to celebrate the completion of a StoryMap that documents the center’s history and evolution. The gathering was a chance to reconnect and share memories of the people and moments that helped shape AEC. See if you can identify some of your former GI colleagues in this group photo!
Have you completed your required university training?
Mandatory training isn't just a compliance checkbox. It’s an essential way we build a shared understanding of how to create a welcoming environment, protect our GI community, ensure a respectful workplace and safeguard university resources, while empowering employees with the support to do these things.This message is a reminder of several important UAF training requirements and upcoming training opportunities. Please review the information below and ensure all applicable training is completed by the stated deadlines.
UA Safe Title IX training
All UAF faculty, staff, and students are required to complete the UA Safe Title IX Training annually. The training is available through Canvas and must be completed by October 31, 2026.
Access the training here: https://north.alaska.edu/browse/all/uaf/courses/title-ix
This mandatory…
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EARTH: Evolving Academics Raising Tiny Humans
EARTH: Evolving Academics Raising Tiny Humans is starting up again! Meet from 2–3 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 30 in Mather Library, 202 Akasofu.
Are you a faculty member, staff scientist, postdoctoral researcher or a graduate student in geosciences who’s working hard to balance your academic career with raising young children? The Mather Library invites you to join your colleagues in the library for coffee and camaraderie. We can explore the literature, share ideas and support each other on this journey of juggling science careers and parenting.
Check out the Family Workstation! Mather Library is a research library, but researchers come in all shapes and sizes and sometimes that includes having littles ones in tow. As such, we have a family work station with a small attached playpen equipped with sensory toys and a mirror. Located just inside the library's main entrance on the way to the coffee machine. Please feel free to use this space…
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Celebrate GI innovators at OIPC’s Innovation Celebration
Lynda McGilvary and Becky Lindsey of the Geophysical Institute will be among the honorees at the Office of Intellectual Property and Commercialization's 2026 Innovation Celebration.
This special event highlights the remarkable achievements of UAF's campus researchers, faculty and staff who have submitted disclosures to or patented an innovation with OIPC. McGilvary and Lindsey were the producers for “Listening to Alaska,” an 18-minute feature film produced by the Geophysical Institute to celebrate the new UAF Walt and Marita Babula Planetarium and to showcase UAF research and facilities.
The event takes place Tuesday, Sept. 22 in the Wood Center ballroom. All are welcome to network with colleagues, university leadership and community leaders while enjoying dinner and 21+ refreshments.
The gathering is a fantastic opportunity to swap stories and insights on navigating the commercialization pathway from engaging partners early while research plans are flexible…
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New Alaska Earthquake Center mugs
Start your mornings right with Alaska Earthquake Center's new 14-ounce ceramic mug! This dark grey cup features one of our seismic monitoring stations, “modified” by a bear who is dozing in front with a seismically steaming cup.
Earthquake Center staff Anthony Erickson came up with the art concept, and Beth Grassi created the artwork.
Purchase your mug here for $16, available for pickup at the Alaska Earthquake Center in Elvey 301. (Please note we are unable to ship mugs at this time.)
Headshot portrait opportunity
All GI-affiliated faculty, graduate students and staff are invited to have updated headshot portraits made at one of three open sessions in September. The portraits are sponsored by the GI director’s office and are available at no charge. They will be used to update GI websites and directory. The GI Design Services photo team will make portraits from 12-4 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Sept. 21, 22 and 23 in the Elvey lobby in front of the Globe Room. Click here to reserve a time to have your photo made.
No new Google storage limits for UAF faculty and staff this year
The University of Alaska will begin enforcing Google Workspace storage quotas on Oct. 1 as part of a systemwide effort to manage storage costs. Existing UAF faculty and staff personal accounts will not have quotas applied. Nanook Technology Services will fund UAF's storage overages for the coming year, as it did last year, so that established research and academic workflows are not disrupted by retroactive limits. Faculty and staff do not need to take any action or request an exception. Accounts created for new faculty and staff on or after Oct. 1 will be provisioned at the systemwide 20 GB employee quota.
Student accounts at UAF follow the same systemwide storage policy that applies to students across the University of Alaska. Students whose academic or research work requires storage beyond the standard allocation, including graduate students with established datasets, should request an exception through the process described in OIT's…
read moreNew memoir by Neal Brown illuminates Alaska's pioneering role in space science
“Northern Lights and Rocket Flights: My Years at Poker Flat Research Range,” a memoir by Neal Brown completed with Sue Mitchell, is now available from Springer. Mitchell turned Brown's 1,100 stories and notes into a compelling 270-page account of NASA, the aurora and nearly two decades leading the world's only university-owned rocket range, Poker Flat.
Scheduling meeting spaces
Are you looking to reserve a meeting space? Following is a list of the spaces GI Operations can schedule for you. Contact Ops at uaf-GIOperations@alaska.edu.
Auditorium – 214 Elvey
Stage, podium, projector, screen, whiteboard. Seats 92
Globe Room – 215 Elvey
Users must clean up tables, chairs, floors, and empty trash cans. This is GI's showroom to the public and is used often; therefore, the room must be left in good condition.
Set up, cleanup, and returning the room to a standard arrangement must be considered in scheduling requests.
Our receiving team will set up and reset the furniture in the Globe Room.
Please let us know in advance if any specific setup is required so we can schedule accordingly.
Conference Room – 616 Elvey
Zoom capabilities. Owl is available for use. Seats 12
Lactation and Wellness Room…
read moreUAF and GI logo downloads available
Please make sure you use the correct GI and UAF logos on all your research posters. You can download the logos at these websites:
For assistance with GI and UAF logos, contact Design Services at x7146.
GI history nugget: The Geophysical Institute comes into being
We often see references to the Geophysical Institute’s official founding date as a July 31, 1946, act of Congress. But it turns out that is actually the date when the bill, HR 7486, was signed by President Truman, thereby becoming Public Law 580. The process that led to the creation of the GI actually started long before that day.
The University of Alaska Board of Regents unanimously approved, on Oct. 6, 1936, a resolution calling for the university to provide the federal government a site on which to build a research facility. The resolution approved by the regents was to offer a site for “a structure suitable for branches of research, including, anthropology, archaeology, astronomy, atmospheric electricity, aurora ethnology, formation and testing of soils, geology, geophysics, ionosphere, meteorology, natural history, paleontology, plant photosynthesis, seismology and terrestrial magnetism.”
The 1946 act establishing the Geophysical Institute authorized the…
read more Download a facsimile of the bill creating the GI from the 1946 Congressional Record (72.15 KB)
Shun-Ichi Akasofu publishes paper about Sydney Chapman
Syun-Ichi Akasofu's paper, “Sydney Chapman: A Biographical Sketch Based on the Book ‘Chapman Eighty, From His Friends,’” was published Dec. 3, 2020, in Perspectives of Earth and Space Scientists, an AGU journal.
Akasofu’s biographical sketch is about Sydney Chapman, one of the greatest geophysicists of the last century. The Chapman Building on UAF's campus, the original home of the Geophysical Institute, was named for him.
In his early days, Chapman devoted his studies to the transport properties of gases and wrote “The Mathematical Theory of Non‐Uniform Gases” with T. G. Cowling. In the field of geophysics (geomagnetism, ionospheric physics and auroral physics), Chapman made fundamental contributions in each field on the basis of rigorous mathematical physics and deep insight. Chapman also wrote the book “Geomagnetism” with J. Bartels. These efforts helped establish the…
read more Akasofu-2020CN000135.pdf (3.08 MB)