Akasofu Building

In May 1997, the governments of the United States and Japan, along with the state of Alaska, agreed to establish an International Arctic Research Center on the UAF campus as a project of the "Common Agenda," approved by President Clinton and Japan's Prime Minister Hashimoto. The U.S.-Japan Common Agenda proposed that both countries cooperate in research on and prediction of global climate change. The research center's primary goals are to study arctic climate changes, the global consequences of those changes and to plan and carry out international cooperative arctic research of the highest possible quality.