Among the attendees to the 2025 Arctic Encounter Summit in Anchorage were leaders from the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, Alaska’s largest research institute.
The GI, as it’s known, boasted revenue in excess of $100 million for fiscal year 2024, mostly from federal research grants. Its researchers study everything from seismology — including the magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula — to volcanoes, the aurora, permafrost, climate change and much more.
Geophysical Institute Director Bob McCoy says the GI plays an important role in interdisciplinary studies, bringing researchers together under one roof. But McCoy says collaboration with Russian scientists, in particular, has been nonexistent of late…