The University of Alaska Fairbanks announced the creation of the Susan Butcher Institute, dedicated to cultivating public service and leadership skills for Alaska's residents.  The institute will provide Alaskans with opportunities to learn and grow, both personally and professionally, through a wide variety of workshops and seminars.

Butcher’s husband, David Monson, will serve as the institute’s first executive director. Monson will develop a range of programs intended to inspire people, especially youths and emerging leaders, to improve their own communities through public service, volunteerism and taking on new challenges. The institute expects to offer the programs on a regular basis starting in fall 2010.  Butcher was a longtime Alaskan and accomplished outdoorswoman who once summited Mount McKinley by dog team with Iditarod co-founder Joe Redington Sr. She died of acute myelogenous leukemia in 2006. 

The University of Alaska Fairbanks recently launched the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, a new research unit to investigate energy options for the state.

“The time is right for an organization like the Alaska Center for Energy and Power to address a variety of state needs for applied energy research,” said Dan White, director of the UAF’s Institute of Northern Engineering, which will house the center.

ACEP organizational director Gwen Holdmann said the center will research both renewable energy resources and how energy fits into the state’s economic development picture. Its focus will be applied research and it will form partnerships with businesses and entrepreneurs throughout the state.

The center’s interdisciplinary research will focus on three areas, Holdmann said. Researchers will look for ways to reduce energy costs in rural Alaska, she said, and will also investigate large-scale energy resources to power energy-intensive industries. The center’s third focus will be on fossil fuels and new developments in things like heavy oils, gas hydrates and carbon sequestration. Holdmann also said the center could offer training and educational opportunities to businesses and the public, such as seminars on energy and energy technology.

A newly developed data logger  can take 10,000 samples per second, provide researchers with a precise GPS timestamp for every measurement taken, and it records information directly to a USB jump drive. The data logger was designed and built by staff at the Geophysical Institute Electronics Shop located at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The Center for Alaska Native Health Research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks will sponsor a series of free public seminars in August featuring its President's Professors of Biomedical Research.

The president's professors are renowned researchers and scientists who specialize in genetics, diabetes, epidemiology, research ethics, nutrition, toxicology, cancer, psychology and anthropology. The professors have partnered with CANHR to help foster similar research in Alaska and are funded by BP and ConocoPhillips, through the University of Alaska Foundation, as part of a charter agreement with the state of Alaska. "

The IPY Science Café is a unique program of the University of Alaska IPY Young Researchers'

Network. The network-powered by young scientists from UA campuses across the state-aims to take science off campus through outreach to the general public and students of Alaska. Science Café events are interactive lectures that will take part throughout IPY to give the public a chance to have one-on-one conversations with polar scientists or visiting specialists and to learn about the science that's happening around the world.

An experiment called HEX2 that consisted of four NASA suborbital sounding rockets, launched from Poker Flat Research Range during an aurora display over northern Alaska on February 14.� Each rocket emitted vapor trails in an experiment to learn more about winds associated with the aurora. Researchers saw the vapor trails from Poker Flat; about 30 miles north of Fairbanks, and aurora watchers at clear locations throughout northern Alaska should have been able to see them.