August 22, 2014
UAF received an $18.8 million award from the National Institutes of Health to fund statewide biomedical research and student training focused on the interface of health, disease and the environment in people and animals. Brian Barnes with the Institute of Arctic Biology is the principal investigator.
Two curators at the UA Museum of the North received awards from the National Science Foundation. Curator of birds Kevin Winker received $405,225 for upgrades to house the bird collection. Curator of fishes Andrés López was awarded $230,000 to create database records and images of the marine invertebrate collections. The effort is a collaboration between Bodil Bluhm and Sarah Hardy in UAF's School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences and the museum.
The Margaret A. Cargill Foundation awarded a $91,000 grant to UAF in support of place and culturally-based arts instruction and integration in Alaska. Faculty members Amy Vinlove and Joan Hornig will lead this project, which will address the limited cultural diversity and turnover of teachers in rural Alaska using a collaborative and community-based approach to preparing and supporting high-quality teachers from Alaska’s rural areas.
Jeffrey T. Freymueller, professor of geophysics at UAF and coordinating scientist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory, was named to the 2014 class of American Geophysical Union Fellows. The fellows program, established in 1962, recognizes AGU members who have made exceptional contributions to the Earth and space sciences, as determined by AGU members.
Psychology student Charlotte Stark has been selected to participate in a Killam Fellowship Program to study at Vancouver Island University. The program, administrated by Fulbright Canada, allows undergraduate students from Canada and the United States to participate in a binational exchange.
Wells Fargo renewed its annual $25,000 support of the UA Museum North’s military appreciation activities; Seisa Group donated $19,503 supporting the Seisa Science Fund at the International Arctic Research Center; Sportsmedicine and Orthopedics Fairbanks donated $11,000 to athletics; the Rasmuson Foundation donated $25,000 to support the CES 4-H Endowment; UTC Aerospace Systems donated two Cloud Cap TASE 300 imaging systems valued at $190,000 to the unmanned aircraft program; CoBank made a $25,000 pledge payment to the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.
An article on opportunities in the Arctic coauthored by Vice Chancellor Mike Sfraga, The US and a peaceful Arctic future was picked up by The Hill blog.
Researcher Matthew Sturm was a coauthor on research led by NASA and the University of Washington that found springtime snow on sea ice in the Arctic has thinned significantly in the last 50 years.
UAF graduate student Laura Starr is pairing ecology and economics in her research. Starr, who is studying natural resources management, was recently awarded a $25,000 Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education grant to continue her work. She is only the second UAF student to receive a SARE award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the past 26 years.
Cristina Hansen, biology and wildlife PhD candidate and USGS Alaska Science Center volunteer won the 2014 Wildlife Disease Association Graduate Student Research Recognition Award for her paper "Microbial infection as a source of embryo mortality in wild geese on the Arctic Coastal Plain of Alaska," which provides the first evidence of bacterial-induced embryo mortality in the Arctic and in eggs of wild geese.
The Alaska 4-H Exchange Program and Alaska families hosted 20 Japanese youth and three chaperones during a cultural exchange this summer. Families in Fairbanks, Juneau, Anchorage, the Mat-Su Valley, Kenai Peninsula and Valdez hosted the youth, who are between the ages of 10 and 17, and three Alaska youths traveled to Japan for an outbound exchange.
The UAF Art Gallery will feature Mary Matthews’ exhibit, From “Thomas the Tank Engine to White Pass,” Oct. 12-25. The exhibit, supported by the People’s Endowment Fund, features the work of an artist who began drawing trains at 4 years old and continued his subject specific interest over 20 years. Viewers will be able to engage with the process of artistic development and the benefits of subject-specific interests for individuals who experience autism spectrum disorders.