NASA Awards APU $5M for a Microplastics Research and Education Center
Photo Credit: SONIA NAGORSKI | UAS
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is awarding approximately $5 million to Alaska Pacific University (APU) to build a Microplastics Research and Education Center.
This funding comes from the Minority University Research and Education Project Institutional Research Opportunity (MIRO). The award aims to enhance scientific capabilities and workforce diversity, supporting APU’s goal of serving Alaska communities through its science programs and mission to provide culturally responsive educational programs in partnership with students, communities, and tribal partners.
How Prevalent Are Microplastics?
The Microplastics Research and Education Center at APU will address Alaska communities’ research and educational needs by investigating and detecting microplastics in Alaska waterways. The focus areas include traditional drinking water sources, urban and rural watersheds, glaciers, coastal waterways, ocean columns, and high-altitude microplastic depositions.
Microplastics have been detected in almost every ecosystem globally and in subsistence foods and waterways in Alaska. However, scientists have yet to determine how much of these contaminants are in the waterways in Alaska and how much they might affect human, animal, and ecosystem health.
Current Issue
November 2024
The Microplastics Research and Education Center at APU will offer opportunities for internships, tuition stipends, and funded research projects—including collaborations with NASA scientists and scientists across academic institutions in Alaska and the University of Michigan—to students in the Marine and Environmental Sciences program at APU.
In the project’s initial years, principal investigator Dee Barker, along with APU collaborators Nate Anderson and Jason Geck, will work with Denise Thorsen of UAF, Chris Ruf of the University of Michigan, and Shelly Moore of the Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research in California, a California Water Board-accredited laboratory for microplastics detection. These collaborators will help build the instrumental capacity of the Alaska and Arctic Waterways Analytics lab at APU to match the expertise of microplastics-accredited labs in California.
The collaboration will also enhance APU’s capacity for remote sensing of ocean surface anomalies associated with microplastics, utilizing Ruf’s methods and NASA’s Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite system, which flies over Earth’s polar regions.
“This partnership with NASA represents a significant step forward in our commitment to scientific research and education. The establishment of the Microplastics Research and Education Center will advance our understanding of microplastics in Alaskan ecosystems and provide our students with invaluable research opportunities,” says Alaska Pacific University Provost Hilton Hallock.
The Microplastics Research and Education Center at APU is adopting a “One Health” approach to this endeavor, honoring Alaska Native traditional ways of knowledge and braiding this important relationship and understanding of Indigenous lands with Western science methods. This program encourages APU students to incorporate their communities’ knowledge into the sciences, supporting a powerful collaboration with NASA scientists. The project’s goal is to provide aspiring environmental scientists opportunities to make discoveries that will enable them to continue to serve their communities and NASA environmental science missions.
RMG Real Estate Emphasizes Professionalism as Independent Brokerage
RMG Real Estate Network founder Reed Moore is shifting his team of almost forty agents away from the Keller Williams brand and starting his own brokerage.
Nonresident Hire Rises Amid Workforce Shortage
The rate of nonresidents working in Alaska rose to an all-time high of 22.5 percent in 2023, as employers struggle to fill a steadily growing number of jobs.
Alaska Commercial Co. Opens New Kotzebue Store
Larger than the existing store, the new location features the first self-checkout stations in Kotzebue, among other advances.
