UND Discovery

UNDDiscovery AUTUMN/WINTER 2015

Growing the UND research enterprise: The legacy of President Robert Kelley

Celebrating our explorers As the University of North Dakota’s new vice president for research and economic development — only four months on the job now — this is my first opportunity to introduce the latest edition of UND Discovery, one of our ways of sharing the many aspects of the University’s research, scholarship and creative work that touch your life and the lives of those around you.

This is a truly outstanding institution, one that has played a crucial role in creating the prosperity we now enjoy, one that is vital to the future of North Dakota and to our nation, and this magazine has chronicled our many contributions. This is not hyperbole. I had the privilege of working at two other excellent universities before coming to North Dakota.

Each had amazing students, faculty and staff who achieved remarkable things. And yet, my impression is that in coming to UND I have arrived at a truly unique institution at a special time in its history as a flagship research university!

I won’t spend any time here to tell you about myself. UND Discovery editor David Dodds has written an embarrassingly complimentary article about my career in this edition, and he has clearly done a much better job than I could have. Suffice it to say that my wife, Margot, and I are very thankful to have been welcomed so warmly by the University and Grand Forks communities, and we are both very excited to be here.

President Kelley set the stage In this edition of UND Discovery, our cover story focuses on the career and research legacy of UND President Robert Kelley, who is retiring in January.

As this magazine is printed and read, President Kelley and First Lady Marcia are saying some of their last “good-byes” to students, staff, faculty and the communities they’ve become such a part of for the past seven and a half years with UND. So with that in mind, we thought it fitting to do an in-depth retrospective on the “Kelley Years” in regard to his influence on research and creative activity. Our lead science writer, Juan Pedraza, did just that with a piece that looks not only at President Kelley’s involvement with UND research, but also what inspired him to become a scientist in the first place, as well as some of the stops along the way to his position as the University’s chief executive.

A line from that story sticks in my mind as I write this letter: Under Kelley’s tenure, “the regional economic impact of research at UND has grown to $197.2 million.”

That’s significant.

Before you explore this edition of UND Discovery, I would like to leave you with a couple of thoughts that can be embodied in the following quotations and which, I think, represent the spirit and purpose of this publication.

In her 1974 science fiction classic, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, Urusla K. Le Guin wrote: “The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer.”

If our students and faculty are our explorers, then UND Discovery tells their tales. This was underscored to me when I was investigating UND as an exciting potential career opportunity. I felt that a natural place for me to learn about the University’s research and scholarly endeavors and its impact on North Dakota and beyond, the place to listen to returned “explorers,” was in UND’s research publications. I certainly found the voices of UND’s explorers in this research magazine.

Finally, an anonymous writer said: “To discover something truly new and novel about our world through research, to develop a new and deeper understanding of our world through scholarship, to dazzle our world with creativity and imagination, these are pursuits of the highest value.”

After only a short time here, it is clear to me that these are our pursuits at the University of North Dakota. Across the many and diverse disciplines in our University, our faculty and students discover, understand and refashion the world. They reach far, delve deep and explore.

Grant McGimpsey Vice President for Research and Economic Development

President Kelley promoted the environment for UND research divisions to grow and flourish, an impressive feat given that much of it took place at a time of historic contraction in federal earmarks and allocations for research.

This environment, along with support from the Legislature and public-private partnerships, led to several new buildings that are now popping up around campus, including a $125 million School of Medicine and Health Sciences headquarters. These new buildings will facilitate innovative, state-of-the-art research in such areas as biomedicine, unmanned aircraft systems, and energy and the environment.

In addition to brick-and-mortar advances, Kelley’s time at UND will be marked by interdisciplinary developments taking place in the arts and sciences. One such effort that he’s proud of is work by the UND Working Group in Digital and New Media to connect library resources with various departments across campus. Kelley also highlights collaborations between the Chemistry Department and the Chemical Engineering Department in biofuels research.

Though President Kelley is never one to take the credit anyway, his research legacy at UND will be one of a stage setter: someone who fostered the entrepreneurial spirit UND has long been known for and that enabled its scientists and creative thinkers to entertain, inform, build, invent, innovate, explore, collaborate and discover.

Farewell, Dr. Kelley!

David Dodds Editor, UND Discovery

IN THIS ISSUE OF

UNDDISCOVERY AUTUMN/WINTER 2015

IN THIS ISSUE Whether within our state’s borders, across the continent or overseas, UND research and scholarly activity is making an impact and drawing recognition. Above, a team of students, led by Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Geology and Geological Engineering Will Gosnold, takes subsurface temperatures north of Minot in western North Dakota as part of research to determine the efficacy and feasibility of producing geothermal power from hot water, and from even-hotter oil, that is being exacted from deep within the earth (story on Page 18). The idea is to use specially modified portable engines to produce power and electricity, resulting in cost savings and smaller carbon footprints compared to current coal-fired options.

The UND students (pictured above, left to right) taking part in the study are Luke Brunson from Alabama, Spencer Wheeling from Minot, Minnesota native Jessie Percy, and Kayode Olatunji, originally from Nigeria. This is just one of the many stories you will find in this issue of UND Discovery magazine.

We also delve into the research legacy of retiring President Robert Kelley, our cover subject. We pay special attention to the foundation he set at UND that has led to extraordinary growth in research space on campus and collaborations among different groups in areas such as biomedical science, biofuel experimentation, unmanned aircraft innovation, and advances in energy and environmental development.

ON THE COVER: President Robert Kelley visits the Biology Department laboratory of Assistant Professor Susan Ellis-Felege (right).

Photo by Shawna Noel Schill. See the articles on Pages 4 and 17.

UND Discovery is published by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, with assistance from the Division of University and Public Affairs. Editor: David Dodds. Contributors: Juan Miguel Pedraza, David Dodds, Peter Johnson, Mark Danes, Carrie Sandstrom, Craig Garaas-Johnson, Denis MacLeod, and Derek Walters. Principal photography by Shawna Noel Schill and Jackie Lorentz. Please send inquiries and comments to the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, University of North Dakota, 264 Centennial Drive Stop 8367, Grand Forks, ND 58202-8367.

UND is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution.

UND.edu/research

2 In pursuit of impactful research – Meet Grant McGimpsey, UND’s new vice president for research.

3 From “Down Under” to Grand Forks – Grant Tomkinson is conducting a worldwide study of youth fitness.

4 Robert Kelley: A research legacy – UND’s retiring president discusses the University’s advances in research.

6 Fulbright family – Richard and Jill Shafer share a destination through separate fellowships.

7 Doorways to discovery – Wayne Seames blends his Fulbright fellowship with research opportunities for students.

8 UND around the world – Fulbright missions have taken four UND faculty members to Europe and Asia.

9 “As we are” – A collaborative art project seeks to dispel stereotype images of American Indians.

10 Communication renaissance – Mark Trahant discusses changes in UND’s Communication Program and the industry.

11 (Pheno)minal photos – A special camera records seasonal vegetation changes in UND’s Oakville Prairie Field Station.

12 The language of science – The process of mathematics provides a solid foundation for life and careers.

13 Where have all the deer gone? – Researchers seek clues to understand the state’s declining deer population.

14 Rocky Mountain dry – Jeff VanLooy and his team use hightech tools and plain old footwork to study glacial melting.

16 A laboratory and a treasure – UND’s Oakville Prairie Field Station is recognized as a special wildlife and grassland resource.

17 Birds, bears and the Bay – Unmanned aircraft give UND researchers a new way to evaluate wildlife in the wilderness.

18 Who says oil and water don’t mix? – Geothermal energy could assist in developing oil production in the state.

19 Springboard to the future – The Energy & Environmental Research Center offers a launching pad to careers.

20 Dry mouth – SMHS researchers receive new grant funding to continue research on factors affecting saliva secretion.

21 Following her heart – Nursing student Shelby Poitra pursues her passion for both health care and research.

22 Go for launch – UND’s CubeSat miniature satellite gains approval for a NASA mission.

22 UND robotics score with NASA – UND’s entry wins high recognition in NASA’s Robotic Mining Competition.

23 “A labor of love” – Co-editor Dana Harsell pours his energy into Governing North Dakota, a one-of-a-kind resource.

24 Brazilian awakening – Marcia Mikulak’s students describe the Xukurú people’s efforts to reclaim their rights and lands.

Focus on faculty: Sima Noghanian works on new concepts for antennas, and Melissa Gjellstad helps translate a Norwegian author’s fascinating history of the “Dakota War.” (INSIDE BACK COVER)

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LEGACIES AND FRESH FACES

In pursuit of impactful research Grant McGimpsey brings a wealth of scientific and administrative experience to his post as UND’s new vice president for research and economic development.

By David Dodds Grant McGimpsey calls his visit to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center back in 2005 a transformational experience.

At that time, the famed military hospital in Bethesda, Md., was treating many of the American veterans from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who had lost limbs in battle. He was visiting the rehab unit as director of the Bioengineering Institute (BEI) at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts, looking to see if researchers at WPI and the BEI could partner with the hospital, the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, and other academic institutions to provide military amputees with better prosthetics and a chance at a more normal life.

McGimpsey, a native of southern Ontario and now UND’s vice president for research and economic development, saw in those injured servicemen a chance to use science and research to do something truly meaningful and relevant. He also saw a bit of his two sons — then only 8 and 10 years old — and a future he did not want them to realize. That really tugged at his heart.

“I have this very vivid mental picture of the (rehab) unit; most of the soldiers were in wheelchairs with various lower and upperlimb amputations,” he said. “It brought the war very, very close and I wanted to do something to help.”

That experience ultimately led McGimpsey, a career chemist with a background in laser photochemistry and surface chemistry, to focus his own research and to enlist researchers at WPI and the BEI to work on advanced prosthetics development. Partnering with the U.S. Army’s Military Amputee Research Program and the many academic institutions working with them, the goal was to develop a titanium post that would seamlessly connect to residual limbs (what’s left over after a traumatic injury), especially above the knee, adhering to the bone and integrating with soft tissue, and protruding through the skin.

With such a prosthetic, an articulable kneelike joint and prosthetic lower limb could be attached to greatly improve a patient’s chance to regain more normal motion and function.

“You’d no longer be stuck with a stumpand-socket solution,” McGimpsey said. “It was PAGE 2

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After moving to the United States in 1989, he set up a laser photochemistry laboratory in the WPI Department of Chemistry. The U.S. Army was an early supporter of this work, which used multiple lasers to simultaneously deliver large amounts of energy into molecules to access high-energy chemical reactions.

The Army was interested in developing special eyewear that could be used by its aviators and troops on the ground to protect against accidental or deliberate exposure to laser light from enemy forces. The Army felt that McGimpsey’s multilaser work could provide a solution.

“It would have allowed troops to see just fine when they were not being exposed, but if they were exposed, the eyewear would immediately become opaque within nanoseconds, thus limiting exposure of the retina to that light. Once the laser exposure ended, the eyewear would become transparent again,” McGimpsey explained.

Ultimately, however, the response times of the eyewear proved too slow to be effective and the Army eventually migrated away from the project. And so did McGimpsey.

Quantum leap Grant McGimpsey. Photo by Jackie Lorentz.

more sophisticated with more sophisticated motion.”

McGimpsey and his WPI team worked with physicians and bioengineers from the University of Utah and the Veterans Administration in Utah to create a surface coating on the titanium prosthetics that would help seal a wound and promote integration with and regeneration of human soft tissue. He added that it was important that the coating be antimicrobial to fend off harmful bacteria.

“We were working on improving on the overall concept with our surface chemistry portion of the work,” said McGimpsey, who spent 22 years at WPI, a highly ranked private science and engineering college with about 5,000 students.

Laser focus As he settles into his new post at UND, McGimpsey explains that his research career — interwoven with a number of administrative roles — has been highlighted by rewarding experiences like those spent working with the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. It’s also had its share of more basic, though not unimportant, science-for-thesake-of-science moments.

His work with Walter Reed was not McGimpsey’s first foray into U.S. military research.

McGimpsey, who got his Ph.D. in chemistry from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, and spent five years at the National Research Council in Ottawa, began applying his laser research to the development of molecular electronic devices, where molecules are meant to do the work of wires, switches and other electronic components. The idea was that a 1-nanometer molecule could do the same things as a 100-nanometer wire or circuit, which is the typical size of today’s electronics on silicon chips.

It’s a solution to a challenge spelled out in “Moore’s Law,” which recognized that the size of electronic components on silicon chips decreased by half every 18 months, while their processing speed doubled in the same timeframe. It’s this regular doubling in speed that has driven the consumer electronics industry for the past 40 years. Computers that once occupied entire rooms now fit onto a chip millimeters in size and operate millions of times faster.

However, chip makers recognized early on that this continuous reduction in size and increase in speed was not sustainable. They reached a point where the devices started behaving less predictably. The quantum behavior of materials started becoming more important. And that’s when researchers, including McGimpsey, turned to single molecules as devices.

Good ‘sense’ In the mid-1990s, McGimpsey teamed up with one of his graduate students who was

LEGACIES AND FRESH FACES attending school through the support of an employer, Bayer Business Group Diagnostics, a subsidiary of the aspirin company.

The two researchers, teacher and student, spent the next five years conducting privatesector research for Bayer’s Blood Instrumentation Division. They focused on developing an optical-based diagnostic device that used molecular sensors to detect electrolytes in blood samples that are important markers for illness and disease.

The work, meant to develop replacements for slower, clunkier versions that relied on electrochemical detectors that had to be rinsed off and recalibrated with solutions after each use, garnered several patents, resulted in multiple publications and laid the basis for McGimpsey’s future work with the U.S. Army on the development of a handheld blood sensor to diagnose dehydration for soldiers in the field.

“It was really eye-opening for me,” McGimpsey said. “It was the first time that I was doing something that had some immediate applicable value. (Bayer) got a lot of value from the work and found it very rewarding.”

In 2003, after his work with Bayer, McGimpsey continued to work on molecular sensors; specifically, he looked for ways to bind molecules to surfaces in ways that did not interfere with their sensing function. This led to a growing interest in surface chemistry, which he coupled with a fascination for solar energy conversion: creating molecules that absorb light, produce electrons and emit an electrical current.

Less than two years later, McGimpsey would find himself at Walter Reed Medical Center, poised to lend his expertise in surface chemistry for the military amputee project — something he’s been passionate about ever since.

medical, engineering, aerospace and business schools, and with its science disciplines, UND has a very significant impact on our economy through technology and workforce development.”

McGimpsey continued, “Through its social sciences and education programs, UND

positively impacts the well-being of all North Dakotans. Through its arts and humanities, UND enriches our culture. I have found all of this in a mid-sized university, and as a result it has been easy to get to know the UND community. n

From “Down Under” to Grand Forks

Formerly a faculty member at the University of South Australia, Tomkinson arrived in Grand Forks with his wife and three children in August. While not a stranger to the United States, he had not visited Grand Forks until he was invited to the UND College of Education and Human Development for interviews in June.

Why Grand Forks?

“UND has a remarkable Kinesiology and Public Health program, backed by solid resources, that is ready to undertake new investigations into issues regarding the physical fitness and activity levels in young people, and how they relate to longevity and quality of life, ” he said.

Tomkinson’s large body of research targets how the life-extending benefits of exercise and activity help people lead productive lives. He and his team recently conducted a randomized controlled study of 56 overweight adolescent boys that showed how physical exercise improved their self-esteem and confidence.

“I see a perfect fit at UND for the areas that I focus on with my research,” said Tomkinson.

“We will be engaged in new research aimed at improving the exercise habits and health outcomes of young people in this region. We will also aim to work at the national level by assessing health and fitness trends and the benefits of regular exercise among different populations over time.”

In 2013, his fitness research generated more than 760 international media stories and reached nearly 400 million people around the globe.

Most recently, Tomkinson served as a senior lecturer in the School of Health Sciences at the University of South Australia, where he earned his doctorate degree. He is the chairman of Active Healthy Kids Australia and the AsiaPacific lead for the Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance, and was the chief lead investigator on Australia’s first “Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Young People” (2014). He was also the project director for the $1 million Anthropometric Survey of the Royal Australian Navy, where he and his team took body measurements of more than 1,300 sailors. n

An international health scholar finds a good fit in UND’s kinesiology program.

By Mark Danes and Juan Miguel Pedraza How fit are today’s young people, compared to their parents or grandparents when they were young? That’s the question Grant Tomkinson, a new faculty member in UND’s Department of Kinesiology and Public Health Education, has been investigating across decades and borders.

He has spent the past 10 years gathering historical fitness data on more than 75 million young people from 50 countries dating back to the 1850s. “By using novel mathematical techniques, my research was the first to conclusively show that young people’s aerobic fitness has declined worldwide by about 15 percent since about 1975,” he said.

UND experience McGimpsey began his duties as UND’s newest vice president for research and economic development on Sept. 8. He is joined in Grand Forks by his wife, Margot McGimpsey, who serves as the chief engagement and communications officer at the UND Alumni Association & Foundation.

Since 2011, McGimpsey had held a similar position as head of research activities at Kent State University in Ohio, overseeing an enterprise credited with inventing liquid-crystal display technology.

McGimpsey describes UND as an exciting and energizing institution.

“When I was doing my research on UND, It was clear to me that it is the flagship research university in North Dakota,” he said. “The University, its faculty and its students have tremendous impact on the people of the state, on its economy and on the world. With its

Grant Tomkinson has gathered worldwide data on fitness levels among young people, dating back to the 1850s. Photo by Jackie Lorentz.

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LEGACIES AND FRESH FACES

Assistant Professor Susan Felege (black shirt) demonstrates specimens from the Biology Department’s collections to President Robert Kelley. Her research team is employing a number of high-tech approaches to generate more comprehensive data on wildlife populations and their responses to environmental changes (see story on Page 17). Photo by Shawna Noel Schill.

Robert O. Kelley: a research legacy UND’s 11th president — a career scientist — has overseen an evolution in the University’s research enterprise, ranging from major initiatives such as unmanned aircraft systems to broad collaboration across the campus and beyond.

By Juan Miguel Pedraza Bob Kelley caught bug fever when he was just a child.

“During a family vacation, a park ranger at Yellowstone National Park showed me little insects called antlions, whose larvae (often called doodlebugs) build traps in sandy soil,” said Kelley, whose name now is followed with Ph.D., and the title of President, University of North Dakota.

“I watched closely as an ant fell into one of those traps and was devoured by the antlion — I was fascinated,” Kelley said.

Kelley’s close encounter with the antlion and its prey sparked his lifelong sense of inquiry. “‘How in the world did that happen?’ I remember asking myself,” said Kelley, who began his tenure as UND’s 11th president July 1, 2008. “I wondered how the insect learned to build that trap. More importantly, as I pondered it, how was that information

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transmitted from one generation to the next of these insects? I became very curious about it.”

That curiosity followed him to college, where he spent a semester breeding Drosophila melanogaster — fruit flies — for a biology professor. Among other tasks, Kelley had to selectively breed flies with no eye pigment — in a species normally endowed with brightly hued eyes — for the final exam the professor was preparing for his class.

“That turned out to be a seminal experience for me,” he said.

Fostering inquiry Kelley’s research legacy at UND includes managing tough times following the end of congressional earmarks in 2011 and pareddown research budgets among the country’s top federal funding agencies.

Today Kelley, a working scientist for the better part of 50 years in academia, is still curious about the world, and that includes

fostering the work of young researchers and scholars.

His scientific curiosity has driven his encouragement of UND’s research enterprise. The regional economic impact of UND research has grown to more than $197 million.

“I ask questions like ‘How does it work?

What are the mechanisms of natural processes? How do animals develop?’” he said.

That ultimately led him into graduate school, where he studied cellular differentiation as part of his Ph.D. program at the University of California-Berkeley, in zoology: cell and developmental biology.

Kelley said curiosity — and a passion to dig up answers — is behind every effective research and scholarship project.

“It’s that kind of fundamental curiosity that drives all researchers and scholars, whether you’re curious about history, what really happened three centuries ago, whether you’re a researcher in the performing arts trying to find new and innovative ways to express movements of the human body, or whether you’re digging into the mysteries of epigenetics,” said Kelley. “That’s one of the most fascinating elements of university life.

And one of the things that’s driven me over the years.”

Collaboration is key Kelley’s portrait hangs in the anatomy division’s display case in the Department of Basic Sciences at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences — that’s Kelley’s academic “home.”

“I exchanged notes and conversations when I was a working scientist with people like UND Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Anatomy Ed Carlson (who spent 40 years teaching and researching here, including 30 years as chair of the former Department of Anatomy),” said Kelley. Before he was named UND’s president, Kelley was director of the Center for Rural Health Research and Education at the University of Wyoming, among other research leadership roles.

“That kind of collegiality underscores why our research enterprise is so successful here,” said Kelley. “Scholars and scientists get to know people all over the world, to exchange ideas, to collaborate, to gather to discuss theories, hypotheses — the results of their experiments.”

Kelley says today’s research is all about collaboration.

“Questions that have impact, whether in the physical sciences, life sciences or in the humanities, are often so broad, so complicated, that they require so many different approaches,” said Kelley. “You’ve got to have colleagues, you’ve got to be able to come together around these complex issues that impact all of us.”

Kelley described research through an anecdote recounted by a carpenter he knows.

LEGACIES AND FRESH FACES “He told me that he likes working with people because carpentry presented issues where it was beneficial to have more than one head to scratch,” Kelley said. “Science, the humanities — all scholarship, all research is much the same way: these days it’s hard to do it by yourself.”

Broader impacts Since he got here in 2008, Kelley has had ultimate responsibility for keeping the University’s research enterprise on track. But he shrinks from taking much credit.

“In my position, you have to start out by saying ‘thank you’ to an awful lot of good, very bright, very hard-working people who are clearly very committed to advancing their disciplines and advancing UND in research and scholarly effort,” Kelley said.

“So we’ve had many bright people on our campus to enhance the research enterprise,” he continued. “The growth in research here hasn’t just been accomplished administratively; the real work is done in laboratories, classrooms and other kinds of venues where people come together to explore ideas and reach some kind of outcome in that exploration.”

The main thing about Kelley’s research legacy is a forward-looking perspective.

“UND’s research enterprise has adapted to the needs of the state very closely,” said Kelley.

“For example, all of us in North Dakota are concerned about our health and about the physiology and the fundamental biomedicine behind health, and we have advanced this through laboratory development in the School of Medicine and Health Sciences,” Kelley said.

“The state recognized that by funding the new medical school building. That huge investment of $125 million will help to advance biomedical education and research and all of the activities of delivering care in our state.”

Filling the toolbox Biomedical research has reached record funding this year — again, in a tough competitive environment nationally — with three major grants totaling more than $30 million.

Those grants, roughly $10 million each, were for an epigenetics COBRE (Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence), a neuroscience COBRE, and for INBRE (IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence), an education and research program that manages funding for researchers around the state, including the tribal colleges.

“Those go into providing the infrastructure that we’ve been talking about,” Kelley said.

“That’s about building the toolbox, building the equipment and instrumentation that we need, helping us hire the best and brightest faculty, and giving them start-up monies so that they have some ‘venture capital,’ if you will, to test out their ideas.”

Fueling energy research A second research growth area: Kelley points to the significant expansion of energy research.

“It’s not just oil and gas, though that’s a big part of it, but we’ve also looked at biomass, wind, geothermal, solar initiatives; we’ve created an Institute for Energy Studies,” Kelley said. “We’re also building a new Collaborative Energy Complex, where people can come together to explore the ideas around energy broadly stated. We’re going to see great results over the coming years,” Kelley said.

The Energy & Environmental Research Center, a strong and applied engineering laboratory, is looking at very practical solutions to the problems facing the energy industry. The more basic fundamental sciences are being developed around energy in the College of Engineering and Mines, Kelley said.

energy, and aerospace, thanks to a spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration in Arts and Sciences.

“We’re seeing real burgeoning in the digital humanities. The UND Working Group in Digital and New Media is trying to connect areas of library resources with the Philosophy Department, even into the Music Department in the College of Arts and Sciences,” Kelley said. “They’re looking to create new educational paradigms in the digital humanities using technology to advance these areas.

“We’re also seeing a lot of new research coming out of our Chemistry Department in collaboration with Chemical Engineering in biofuel development,” Kelley said. “It’s beyond ethanol; UND researchers are looking at other forms of biomass and what other forms of fuel you can develop from that biomass. This is a rapidly growing area.”

Amplifying human intellect “Questions that have impact, whether in the physical sciences, life sciences or in the humanities, are often so broad, so complicated, that they require so many different approaches. You’ve got to have colleagues; you’ve got to be able to come together around these complex issues that impact all of us.”

Unmanned revolution A third area that has taken off in the last several years under Kelley’s watch is Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), including the establishment of a Center of Excellence for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Research, Education and Training, based at the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences.

“Actually, we’re using unmanned systems for a variety of robotic applications, not only devices that fly but also those that work on the surface of the Earth, and even some that go underneath the surface and in water,” he said.

“We’ve got new construction going on, new laboratories over at UND Aerospace (with the addition of Robin Hall), thanks to benefactors Si Robin and Mary E. Bazar,” Kelley said.

All this is in addition to the UAS Center of Excellence at the Grand Forks International Airport and a new training facility at the Grand Forks Air Force Base.

“They present huge opportunities for both basic and applied research activities,” Kelley said.

Interdisciplinary strengths Kelley said there’s growth in many other areas besides the “big three” of biomedicine,

Kelley’s long experience as a bioscientist doing bench research and managing research establishments has taught him a lot about complexity and the need for high-performance computing (HPC) to engage in deeper investigations.

“That’s the thing about the biological sciences: complexity,” said Kelley. “We’ve understood since about 1953 the nature of the double helix, we’ve understood how genes now fit into chromosomes, but what the genome produces — how it works — creates stunning complexity.”

Tackling complex questions and generating a deluge of data, today’s scientists can’t do much without HPC. “Any scientist, any creative person, wants to crunch more numbers faster, and wants to ask more questions and get outcomes and answers more quickly,” Kelley said. “HPC amplifies the human intellect. That’s why we’re privileged that the state of North Dakota set up the HighPerformance Computing Center, located on the west end of our campus. It gives researchers here and elsewhere in the system access to the computing power that’s essential to any effective research enterprise.”

To grow the research enterprise at UND, Kelley said, the institution must focus on strengthening fundamental resources: facilities, equipment, laboratories, appropriate classrooms and technologies.

But Kelley also stressed, “The most important resource is the human mind. So, we obviously must recruit the best and the brightest, and we’re already doing that. We have more faculty coming in who are better prepared and more productive, and we’re going to see that growth across our campus.”

It is, Kelley noted, an exciting time to be a part of UND’s research and scholarly activities. n

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FULBRIGHT FACULTY Seasoned veterans Despite it being her first Fulbright experience, Jill isn’t exactly a newbie when it comes to education missions around the world.

She and the Shafer children often accompanied Richard on his past endeavors.

Sometimes she would locate her own work once settling into a country. She’s worked for Doctors without Borders, taught English in Uzbekistan, and provided lectures on adult education in the Philippines, just for starters.

Last year, she traveled to Ethiopia as part of the “Ethiopia Reads” initiative with Anne Walker, a colleague in the Teaching and Learning Department and acting dean of the College of Education and Human Development.

Language shift

Photo by Shawna Noel Schill

Fulbright family UND’s Richard and Jill Shafer are in Rwanda on separate prestigious scholarly fellowships to live, learn and teach.

By David Dodds Richard Shafer figures he’s taught in more than 100 university settings over his decadeslong education career.

Sometimes, at least seven or eight — he loses count — he was serving as a Fulbright scholar in some of the more remote corners of the world. The Philippines, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Mozambique, South Africa — pick a “stan” and he’s probably been there as a teacher or as a Peace Corps volunteer in his younger days.

A professor of journalism in the UND Communication Program, Shafer has seen it all when it comes to student cultures, too. He’s been places where he had to remove the light bulbs when he left the classroom lest they not be there the next day; in other places, students just stopped showing up when the rainy season started, and then there were places where students were used to paying teachers for grades. If they had to work too hard, they’d simply find another, more lenient instructor.

“You don’t really expect anything; you just show up and adapt,” Shafer said. “We’ve been in some places where things just don’t work.

It all goes back to the Peace Corps, where I PAGE 6

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Her Fulbright appointment has her assisting in a massive language transition for a mostly agrarian country that existed for generations under French-speaking Belgian rule. The transition has Rwanda switching its language of education from French to English.

“It’s basically a national shift that is taking place overnight,” Jill said.

The reasons for the change are many, but it primarily has to do with Rwanda trying to separate from its sometimes brutal colonial past.

Jill, who is an expert in English teaching and learning, will train some of the 1,000 or so native African teachers who will eventually serve as mentors for Rwanda’s language conversion.

started; you learn as you go along.”

Hello, Rwanda Today, Shafer is on another adventure as a Fulbright Scholar. But he’s not alone. He’s joined by his wife, Jill, an assistant professor in the UND Department of Teaching and Learning, who is on her own Fulbright Fellowship — her first.

At UND, Jill heads up the graduate English Learner Education Program.

They’re in Rwanda to teach at the University of Rwanda in the capital city of Kigali, and to conduct research throughout the country.

They reported for their new duties on Oct. 1, and are expected to spend the next seven to nine months in Africa.

Jill said that they learned at a recent Fulbright training session in Washington, D.C., that a husband-and-wife team on separate scholarly fellowships to the same area is fairly rare.

But there was no way that the Shafers — whose youngest son is a college freshman — were going to do it alone. Jill jokingly calls it “empty nest” therapy.

With 10,169 square miles, Rwanda is the fourthsmallest nation on the African mainland in terms of area. It also has one of Africa’s highest population densities with just over 11 million people. Its economy is primarily agricultural.

FULBRIGHT FACULTY She also hopes to spend time working outside the capital city.

“The capital city of Kigali is so unreflective of the rest of the country,” Jill said. “If you just stay at the university, you’re missing a lot about what is really going on, what these trainers will be dealing with, and what the conditions are like in these rural schools.”

sense of what it’s like to be a media professional in that kind of environment.

“I might have to be a little cautious about the way I go about things, but interviewing journalists is interesting. They are the easiest people in the world to interview, because they are all just waiting for someone to finally ask them a question,” Shafer said.

Media mission

‘Right for us’

With Richard’s latest Fulbright appointment, he continues to teach journalism and research the state of the press in yet another new setting.

Richard describes the press in Rwanda as “very controlled.” He looks forward to interviewing local journalists in the rural provinces that surround Kigali to get a more accurate

The Shafers started the rigorous Fulbright application process nearly two years ago. They carefully selected possible destinations that would work for both. Their options were in Rwanda, Bulgaria and Lithuania.

Rwanda, a tiny yet picturesque African nation that doesn’t appear on some modern world maps, fit the Shafers’ academic and

Doorways to discovery Chemical engineer Wayne Seames parlays a Fulbright assignment into opportunities for students to gain globally relevant research experience abroad.

By Juan Miguel Pedraza University of North Dakota Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering Wayne Seames doesn’t need to figure out where to go on vacation the next three summers.

He’ll be taking three separate cohorts of five engineering students to the University of Leeds (UoL) in the United Kingdom, thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) program.

Seames is no stranger to work abroad, and to the UoL in particular.

Seames He recently returned from a developmental leave assignment in Leeds, where he held a Fulbright Distinguished Chair during the 2014-15 academic year.

Seames said his work with students on this new project will enable him to continue valuable energy research collaborations started during his Fulbright stint at UoL. Seames, the principal investigator; co-principal investigator Winny Dong of the Califor-

nia State Polytechnic University at Pomona Engineering College (CPP); and international host Professor William Gale, director of UoL’s Energy Research Institute, were recently awarded $250,000 for a three-year program to establish an IRES study focused on technologies to mitigate global climate change.

“The program aims to provide student opportunities for participation in high-quality, globally relevant research conducted through a U.S.-U.K. collaborative partnership,” Seames said.

Underrepresented groups The program also will boost student awareness of global climate change and strategies to address this crisis.

“We want to expose undergraduates from non-doctoral institutions, especially those from underrepresented groups, to engineering research and its potential as a future career opportunity,” Seames said.

“We also want to expose U.S. students to a different culture, one that has had great influence on the U.S. and with which the U.S. frequently collaborates,” Seames added. “We want to foster U.S.-U.K. research partnerships.”

Students selected for this program will participate in a yearlong program beginning

research pursuits and also spoke to their collective sense of adventure.

“There is always work to be done in these countries; there’s always something to do,” Jill said. “But it will be nice to go over there with a particular purpose already laid out.”

“Rwanda just seemed to have it all for us,” Richard added.

Richard and Jill said they are grateful to their academic departments, their colleges and the UND leadership for supporting their Fulbright fellowships.

“UND has always been generous and supportive,” Richard said. “The University is pretty encouraging when it comes to flying the UND flag around the world. It’s built into our academic culture.” n

in January 2016. They will learn about their topics and develop the skills they need to perform their research under the guidance of a faculty researcher at either UND or CPP. At UND, research advisors are participants from the North Dakota SUNRISE (Sustainable Energy Research, Infrastructure and Supporting Education) program, a joint initiative between UND and North Dakota State University; and the UND Institute for Energy Studies, part of the College of Engineering and Mines. CPP research advisors are faculty in its College of Engineering.

Long partnership Seames said the program represents another step in a collaboration between UND and CPP that began a decade ago when he and Dong first launched a multifaceted partnership between their respective institutions. Today, UND and CPP have an articulation agreement to accept each other’s courses and a program agreement for a combined bachelor’s degree at CPP/master’s degree at UND. CPP chemical engineering students also have participated in the annual SUNRISE Research Experience for Undergraduates program at UND for the past 10 years.

During the summer, students involved in the new IRES opportunity will spend nine weeks abroad at UoL conducting research.

Upon their return, the students will prepare their results for publication and presentation to a variety of audiences.

Students will be matched with British student ambassadors so they can learn about life in the U.K. from their peers. They will also participate in technical and cultural field trips. n

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FULBRIGHT FACULTY

UND around the world A look at other faculty members who have taken their expertise abroad through Fulbright missions.

Sukhvarsh Jerath Professor of Civil Engineering Jerath, who serves as the graduate program director in the Civil Engineering Department, recently completed a teaching and research assignment as a Senior Fulbright Scholar at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), in Powai, Mumbai, India.

Jerath was one of only 15 senior Fulbright Scholars out of a total of 110 recipients nationwide, including students, to receive this prestigious type of Fulbright, known as the “Nehru Award.”

Jerath taught the graduate level civil engineering course on structural stability that had not been offered for years due to a shortage of qualified faculty. Normally, about 25 students would Jerath take that level of course. However, after local promotion of his visit, the number jumped to more than 70. Jerath also helped two Ph.D. candidates and one dual-degree student (bachelor’s and master’s level combined) with their dissertations and theses.

Students gave Jerath an average score of 93 percent (very good to excellent) in their evaluations of the curriculum, course and the instructor.

Jerath also led seminars exploring aspects of structural engineering and structural mechanics (in particular, bridges and storage tanks) at three institutions: IITB, the Indian Institute of Sciences in Bangalore, and the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India. The schools are ranked as the No. 1, 2, and 3 engineering institutions in India, respectively.

Rebecca J. Romsdahl Associate Professor of Earth System Science and Policy Romsdahl earned a 2013-2014 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to conduct research in the United Kingdom. Her Fulbright project was titled “Comparing Adaptation Planning for Climate Change at Local Government Levels in the United Kingdom (U.K.) and United States.”

Romsdahl, who is the first UND Aerospace faculty member to receive a U.S. State Department Fulbright Award, spent her Fulbright experience at Lancaster University on the northwest coast, about two and a half hours by train from London. She focused on global climate change and its policy implications.

Romsdahl conducted a survey and interviews with local government officials across the U.K. to develop a deeper understanding of how local Romsdahl governments are framing climate adaptation and the barriers they face in the policy process. She is now developing a nationwide survey of U.S. local governments to implement in 2016. She will compare her findings in the U.K. with the new U.S. data to better understand climate adaptation planning within local governments.

“Climate change is the greatest threat facing humanity in the 21st century,” said Romsdahl, who also led the planning for a Climate and Culture Festival at UND to highlight the significance of the United Nations Climate Conference in early December.

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Saleh Faruque Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering Faruque was the recipient of the prestigious U.S. Fulbright Scholar award (2011-2012) to conduct work in his native Bangladesh. There, he developed expertise in telecommunications through teaching and hands-on training. Upon return from his Fulbright sojourn, Faruque developed a UND course in Advanced Communication Engineering based on his experiences in Bangladesh.

In addition to his Fulbright award, the UND College of Engineering and Mines awarded Faruque its Outstanding Professor of the Year award in 2008 and 2012. Recently (Oct. 6, 2015), Faruque obtained one U.S. patent for UND and has several U.S. patents pending. He received the Certificate of Acknowledgement for the Advancement of Intellectual Property Commercialization and Economic Development in 2008. Faruque also was highlighted as the “featured engineer” in the Web-based international electrical engineering Faruque magazine, EEWeb (July 2015).

Currently, Faruque is working on a book project with Springer Publications: a made-easy series comprising six books in wireless communications. Two of these books have already been published, Radio Frequency Propagation Made Easy and Radio Frequency Source Coding Made Easy. A third book, Radio Frequency Channel Coding Made Easy, was expected to be out by the end of 2015.

Prior to joining UND, Faruque worked in the telecom industry for more than 20 years in various capacities and contributed extensively to cellular communications and related areas. During his affiliation with the industry, Faruque authored a textbook, Cellular Mobile Systems Engineering (Artech House, 1996), and contributed several chapters to three other books.

Paul Sum Professor of Political Science and Public Administration, and Department Chair

In 2009-2010, Sum received a Fulbright Scholar Award to work in Romania, where he lectured and conducted research.

Sum has long maintained a special relationship with Romania. He held the position of Lecturer and Fellow at the Faculty of Political Science and Public Administration at Babes-Bolyai University in ClujNapoca, Romania (1996-1998), under a program funded by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. And since 2007, he has held an academic appointment with the same faculty for the Master’s in Research Design and Data Analysis Program.

Sum is also an accomplished international evaluator and consultant. He has worked with the U.S. Agency for International Development, World Bank, Council of Europe, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, National Democratic Institute, International Research & Exchanges Board, and the American Sum Council for Learned Societies, among others.

Sum’s research specializes in post-communist Europe. He also is a board member for the Society for Romanian Studies.

At UND, Sum teaches courses in comparative politics, democratization, human rights, research methodology, and social entrepreneurship. n

ART AND SCIENCE

“As we are” A collaborative UND art project smashes through stereotypes of American Indians to create a more accurate reflection.

By Carrie Sandstrom UND Professor of Art and Design Lucy Ganje and her colleague in the department, Professor Kim Fink, have been spending a lot of long hours in the studio together, but not for any class.

Through UND’s Sundog Multiples, a student-focused print shop, the two have been dedicating much of their time to work on a different kind of educational endeavor — their new project, “Native Impressions: In Our Own Words.”

Lucy Ganje (left) and Kim Fink hold up a large carving done by Philadelphia artist Daniel Heyman. The carving is then used on the letterpress to print the portrait of Leigh Jeanotte, director of UND’s American Indian Student Services. This work and 12 additional portraits of North Dakota tribal members were created by Heyman. The images were designed to portray the subjects not in a stereotyped manner but as contemporary people dealing with current problems. Photo by Jackie Lorentz.

“For the most part, the stereotype is that (Native Americans) are from the past, that people exist, but only in a particular framework,” Ganje said. “So I see this as an artistic, educational process for nonnative people to actually be able to see and learn more about native communities.”

Ganje and Fink, along with Philadelphia artist and Professor Daniel Heyman, have dedicated much of their time over the summer and the last few semesters to “Impressions.” When completed, the project will include 12 portraits of tribal members in North Dakota with accompanying letterpress prints of their words, in addition to a larger portrait and letterpress print of UND’s Leigh Jeanotte, who serves as the Director of American Indian Student Services and has helped with “Impressions” throughout its course.

“This project is important because of the national and international stereotypes that still exist about native people and what their concerns are, and what the issues are that they face, especially in North Dakota and especially here at the University of North Dakota,” Ganje said. “We have a commitment at UND, a stated commitment, to native people, so it was good that this project grew out of the University of North Dakota, because it shows our ongoing commitment.”

Leaders at the four tribal colleges in North Dakota helped identify individuals with diverse backgrounds and roles to be featured in the portraits. Over the course of the summer and two cross-state road trips, the project team interviewed all 12 individuals identified. Each interview took roughly two hours to complete, during which Heyman painted the individual and the conversation was recorded.

“We knew it was going to be a lot of work, but once we got into it there was just so much to it, so much information,” Fink said. “Lucy (Ganje), she’s going through two hours of conversation that she’s having to boil down. Each person had different themes to their lives.”

Following this summer’s interviews, the real work began. Ganje, who teaches graphic design and letterpress, sifted through each interview, looking for key phrases and themes, which she then designed and typeset onto letterpress broadsheets for each subject. Heyman, who teaches painting at Princeton University and the Rhode Island School of Design, created a portrait of each individual, which was turned into a print using a reductive woodblock process, overseen by Fink, a master printer and director of Sundog Multiples.

“We’re so lucky to work on a project like this where it’s a true collaboration and it’s so much fun,” Ganje said. “We work late nights, we work into the morning, but how often do you get that opportunity? It’s just been really wonderful.”

Throughout the process, Fink and Ganje say it was essential that the project be respectful of the subjects’ voices and life experiences.

“The whole point of the project was to give voice to contemporary American Indian people and the issues that affect their communities,” Ganje said. “We made sure to be respectful in the sense that it wasn’t our words … It was important that it was the individuals speaking and not us interpreting.

“It was an honor and a big responsibility for us because, once you read the text panels, you see that often what they shared with us was really emotional, so it was an honor to be trusted with that information, that story, and then it was a responsibility to get it right.”

The team hopes to have the project completed and ready for display in the spring. They say the first show will be held at the North Dakota Museum of Art, but, after that, the show will travel around the country.

They also hope to eventually turn the project into a book to make it even more accessible.

“One of the things I think is exciting and important about this project is that it talks about contemporary native issues,” Ganje said.

“It’s especially important to us that it travel nationally so that people can, perhaps, move away from the stereotyped images people often have about native people and can look at them as contemporary people facing contemporary problems.” n

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ART AND SCIENCE “The changes in the digital world happened a lot faster than anyone imagined,” said Trahant. “Now we’re going through a separate transition into the mobile world.”

Tribal connections

Mark Trahant is the new Charles R. Johnson Endowed Professor of Journalism in UND’s Communication Program. He has extensive experience in print and digital media, and has also worked with American Indian newspapers. Photo by Jackie Lorentz.

Communication renaissance

Today, information is omnipresent and many students indicate that “unplugging” their data connection — even for a day — is nearly unthinkable.

Instead of reading the news at the end of the day, it is more common for many to reach for a mobile device to check news and communications immediately upon waking up in the morning.

“The advantage of this new world is that we all know information is much stronger when people share it, communicate, and are part of it,” said Trahant. “People are consuming (more news), but they’re also participating.”

Trahant has won numerous journalism awards and was a finalist for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting as co­author of a series on federal Indian policy.

“We’re so excited about Mark joining UND,” said Debbie Storrs, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “Mark is a great addition to the Communication Program, given his professional experience, and will help develop a Native American student journalism program.

“The goal to develop such a program is tied to our commitment to diversity and builds on existing strengths, including the Native Media Center, that were previously created by committed faculty. We also expect that Mark will help strengthen collaborative relationships with tribal community colleges.”

Fresh focus UND’s Communication Program adapts to a rapidly changing world to become leaner, faster and more relevant in curriculum and opportunities for aspiring journalists and media professionals.

By Craig Garaas-Johnson In this world of near-instantaneous and sometimes overwhelming data transmission, it is often the digital journalists and communication professionals from across the world who interpret, relay and make sense of new information.

“This is a really exciting time to be talking about journalism,” said Mark Trahant, an award-winning journalist. “It’s a whole new era.”

The UND Communication Program recently hired Trahant as the new Charles R.

Johnson Endowed Professor of Journalism to help establish its new journalism track. He is a former columnist at The Seattle Times; was publisher of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News in Moscow, Idaho; executive news editor of The Salt Lake Tribune; reporter for the Arizona Republic in Phoenix; and has worked at several tribal newspapers.

Trahant is also extremely active in social media, with thousands of followers. He is truly a journalist comfortable in both print and digital media, and he’s looking forward to sharing these perspectives in the classroom at UND.

“We all know information is much stronger when people share it, communicate, and are part of it.”

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Successful graduates of the Communication Program already work at local, regional and national advertising and public relations companies, at mass media outlets, in newsrooms, at universities and in TV and radio stations across the country. For the Communication Program, adapting to the changing media landscape is always a goal.

In the last two years, the program has undergone an extensive undergraduate curriculum redesign, including new courses, new paths through the major and other new opportunities for students. The result is a strategic alignment of courses that will distinguish UND’s future Communication graduates.

A student entering the Communication Program in the fall of 2015 could choose one of two options for their major: a strategic communications track or a journalism track.

Students can, of course, still major in “communication” generally, but the realigned curriculum offers them an opportunity to develop specialized skills that will make them even more competitive in the job market.

“The value of the new courses and new

ART AND SCIENCE teaching methods is in the fusion of strong digital technology and theoretical components with focused experiential-learning opportunities,” said Slavka Antonova, director of the graduate program in communication. “All of these pertain to real-life issues that public relations professionals and journalists tackle in their organizations.”

The streamlined curriculum is designed with employers in mind, emphasizing writing, experiential work and applied learning.

Lee, a dedicated full-time online instructor.

Kim comes from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota and provides expertise in online and social media strategies. Lee earned his

Building a Team In addition to Trahant, the program hired Soojung Kim, a tenure-track assistant professor in strategic communication; and Joonghwa

Kim

(Pheno)minal photos A lone camera in UND’s Oakville Prairie continuously snaps images of a plot of local grassland as part of a larger transcontinental study of seasonal vegetation cycles.

By Juan Miguel Pedraza In a patch of prairie never touched by the plow, University of North Dakota geographer and remote sensing expert Brad Rundquist and a team of graduate and undergraduate students have set up a camera that’s part of an international environmental monitoring project called the PhenoCam Network.

The project is supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior’s North Central Climate Science Center (NC CSC), located in Fort Collins, Colo., through the national AmericaView Consortium.

Rundquist has been involved with the AmericaView Consortium for more than a decade, serving the entire time as director of “North Dakota View.”

UND’s PhenoCam is located at the University’s Oakville Prairie Field Station near Emerado, N.D. “The PhenoCam is aimed at a small section of the prairie, taking images every half hour,” said Rundquist, who launched UND’s geographic information systems certificate program in 2002.

The Geography and Geographic Information Science and Biology Departments are part of UND’s College of Arts and Sciences.

The main purpose of PhenoCam is to study the phenology — or seasonal cycles — of vegetation. Data are collected, stored and analyzed to help scientists understand the natural variability of climate and yearto-year weather and detect climate changes over much longer periods of time. The PhenoCam Network now includes about 80 cameras across the continent, with more being added annually. The program is led by researchers at Harvard University, Boston University, the University of New Hampshire and Washington University. NC CSC recently coordinated with the PhenoCam Network to expand the number of systems located in the Missouri River Basin.

The UND PhenoCam installation, which now also includes a weather station, runs on two 12-volt marine batteries housed in a secure, waterproof box.

Lee

Ph.D. at the Missouri School of Journalism in 2012, with his research area in advertising.

Both Kim and Lee joined UND this fall.

“Currently, the Communication Program is in the midst of a very dynamic and exciting renewal or renaissance,” said Timothy Pasch, UND associate professor of communication and chair of the program. “This is a great time to be a Comm major. I see our discipline as existing at a dynamic intersection between digital and traditional technologies.” n This story was adapted from a version that first appeared in the spring issue of Alumni Review, a quarterly publication of the UND Alumni Association & Foundation.

A wireless modem — broadcasting on a cell signal — sends the digital photos to the main PhenoCam Network server at the University of New Hampshire. Rundquist also archives the photos, as well as weather and other data, on a UND server (http://arts-sciences.und.edu/geography/nd-view/phenocam_project.cfm). The camera shoots images in the blue-green-red spectrum and also in near-infrared. Twin solar panels recharge the battery.

A small wind turbine serves as a power backup for the solar panels.

The UND station is meant to broaden the scope of the visual survey to include prairie landscapes, in addition to the many sites located in forested areas.

“The reason the network was set up is that we don’t have a really good idea of how plants respond to climate variability in the short term to longer-term climate change,” Rundquist said. “So the idea here is to put up cameras that observe the timing of the greening up, peak greenness and browning down of different types of vegetation, in essence, to monitor how different types of plants respond to different climatic conditions in different places and to establish a continental-scale baseline for looking at the effects of longer-term environmental change.” n

Graduate student Morgen Burke (left) and Professor Brad Rundquist with the PhenoCam installation on UND’s Oakville Prairie Field Station. It is being used as part of a continent-wide project to examine the seasonal cycles of vegetation.

Photo courtesy of the Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science.

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ART AND SCIENCE

The

language

of

SCIENCE

solving complex problems as very important for recent college graduates. Further, 56 percent of those surveyed said working with numbers and statistics was very important.

Clearly, even for non-math majors, an essential understanding of mathematic principles is helpful on the job hunt.

Proof positive For Ginny Murphy, earning a degree in math wasn’t her first choice.

Starting out in chemical engineering, she came to realize she wasn’t interested in the options for graduates in her field. After talking to a consultant at a Society of Women Engineers conference, she chose to pursue mathematics.

“Math was always one of my strengths, and it just made sense to pursue a degree in something that I enjoyed,” she said.

Murphy didn’t know exactly where a math degree might take her, and she almost certainly didn’t expect it to be the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Keyport, Wash. Murphy has spent the past 14 years there working as a project manager with other mathematicians, providing critical support for Navy systems.

She compares her current projects to writing mathematical proofs, a deductive argument that teaches students rigor and persuasion — skills valuable in any field.

“I use a lot of the same processes that I used in math to get from A to B,” Murphy said, “delivering a project to the customer within the budget and within the scope, taking into account all these different moving pieces. This is the same process I used in writing a proof.”

Wise words Photo by Shawna Noel Schill

Joel Iiams points out the global demand for graduates who are fluent in mathematics, the “language of science.”

By Craig Garaas-Johnson Listening to popular media, we sometimes forget that the liberal arts embody more than the fine arts.

This can be especially true for mathematics, which has been an essential discipline of liberal arts since classical antiquity.

Joel Iiams, chair of the UND’s Mathematics Department, explains that math is the language that almost all scientists and engineers use in their respective fields.

“The tie between math and the sciences is a much more natural tie than most people make,” Iiams said.

Still, many don’t fully appreciate the opportunities available to students who learn this “language.” What kinds of careers are open to math majors? Well, you might need a mathematician to calculate the answer.

“About 50 percent of our majors are secondary education math majors,” Iiams says. “Their intention is to go to teach middle school or high school. There are some who know exactly what they want to be.

There are others who just really enjoy math, and they don’t know yet what they will do with a math degree.”

Like many liberal arts disciplines, the purpose of a math degree is not to prepare graduates with a technical skill, but to build a foundation upon which they can understand new concepts and new ideas in an evolving world.

“Studying math is a process of discovery, and our job is to have the right structure to get them where they want to go,” Iiams said.

Borrowing parts of a quote from celebrated 19th century French microbiologist Louis Pasteur, Iiams stressed the need to learn and understand math.

“We tell all our students it is better to take more math than less math,” said Iiams, before repeating Pasteur’s words of wisdom: “Chance favors the prepared mind, and mathematics prepares the mind.” n This story was adapted from a version that first appeared in the spring issue of Alumni Review, a quarterly publication of the UND Alumni Association & Foundation.

Industry demand However, graduates with math degrees find there are significant opportunities available to them, including actuarial science, operations research and, of course, teaching.

According to the Association of American Colleges and Universities, in a survey of more than 400 employers, 70 percent rated analyzing and

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Ginny Murphy (with family): Mathematics is a deductive process that teaches rigor and persuasion — valuable skills for any field. A UND alumna, Murphy currently works for the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center as a project manager with other mathematicians.

Where have all

ECOSYSTEMS; HOME AND AWAY

the deer gone?

An Undergraduate Research/Creative Activity Fund helps a professor/ student team answer important wildlife management questions.

By David Dodds and Craig Garaas-Johnson For Jason “Jay” Boulanger, an assistant professor of biology, the state of North Dakota is his laboratory. And the deer that roam within its borders are his focus. He’s currently leading a project titled “Factors Related to Deer Health in North Dakota.”

Area sportsmen may already be aware why such a study is necessary after the dramatic decline in deer population in the state.

Boulanger has enlisted the help of UND student Shay Erickson, a fisheries and wildlife biology major from Thief River Falls, Minn., as part of the project that was made possible with support from the College of Arts and Sciences’ “Undergraduate Research/Creative Activity Fund.”

Boulanger and Erickson are working closely with the North Dakota Game and Fish Department (NDGF) and using biological data, including antler beam measurements, from more than 750 North Dakota whitetailed deer bucks. Nutrition plays a large part in antler size, so deer antler metrics have been used as an index of deer and herd health. In

Jay Boulanger

general, larger beam diameters may be associated with healthier deer.

Under Boulanger’s guidance, Erickson is reviewing current research on the subject and then analyzing the data to determine if there are applications for North Dakota deer management.

According to Boulanger, preliminary results suggest no relationship between severe winters and antler metrics the following fall.

Given the data, there does not appear to be an immediate need to address white-tailed deer health or antler restrictions in any one region within North Dakota. However, state officials will continue to monitor deer populations for changes that might require intervention.

For Erickson, the experience will lead to a poster at a conference and possibly a published article in a peer-reviewed journal. It also provides valuable networking opportunities — a huge advantage in a competitive job market.

“This is a remarkable research opportunity for this student to work with NDGF professionals outside the classroom on a real-world, high-profile wildlife issue that has potential to inform better management,” Boulanger said.

The declining deer population has directly impacted the number of hunting licenses that the NDGF has issued in recent years. In 2009, the state made 144,000 total deer licenses available. By 2014, that number dropped to 48,000 — the lowest level since 1980. At the same time, interest in hunting remained constant.

“We had unprecedented deer populations up to 2008 and 2009,” said Marty Egeland, an outreach biologist with the NDGF. “There was a lot of habitat available, and millions of acres of (Conservation Reserve Program) land out there.”

Where had all these deer come from?

Egeland said a batch of positive environmental factors created the right conditions for a population explosion.

“There were two perfect storms that occurred inside of a decade,” he said. “Everything lined up to have big deer populations,

but when it crashed — it crashed!”

With lots of available land, plentiful food and moderate winters, the deer population grew until it threatened to get out of hand.

There were so many deer, in fact, they caused degradation of farms and businesses. In response, NDGF had to thin the herd.

“We increased license numbers tremendously,” Egeland said.

What followed was the unpredictability of three harsh North Dakota winters. Other factors also affected deer numbers, including loss of habitat due to land development for energy and agriculture, and possibly the impact of chronic wasting disease, a contagious condition of the central nervous system that is always fatal in deer.

Deer population in the state plummeted.

Understanding these cycles is an important part of what the NDGF does, along with continually evaluating deer population and looking for trends. NDGF big game biologists are always involved in planning, researching, analyzing and informing the public about the state’s deer.

The work of Boulanger and Erickson is augmenting these efforts to restore healthy populations of these charismatic animals, regarded by many as an important natural resource and economic boon to the state. n This story was adapted from a version that first appeared in the spring issue of Alumni Review, a quarterly publication of the UND Alumni Association & Foundation.

Shay Erickson

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ECOSYSTEMS: HOME AND AWAY 3,000 to 4,000 feet higher than those at Glacier National Park — decreased two to three times faster since 1999 than they did in nearly four decades prior.

“There is no doubt that these glaciers are melting for sure, and very, very rapidly, so that is our concern,” VanLooy said.

Just as fascinating as the science that VanLooy and his student crew use to monitor glacier activity are the adventures they endure getting there.

Adventures abound

The Wind River Range in western Wyoming contains the Rocky Mountains’ largest glacial mass in the lower 48 states. Photo courtesy of Jeff VanLooy.

Rocky Mountain dry “Remote sensing” is both a feeling and a tool used by UND glaciologist Jeff VanLooy as he studies rapidly melting ice fields in western Wyoming’s Wind River Range.

By David Dodds Straddling the Continental Divide in the rarified air 12,000 feet above sea level with only a satellite phone between you and the closest town some 22 miles away is not for the faint of heart.

But for University of North Dakota glaciologist Jeff VanLooy, it’s becoming a summer routine. Every year since 2011, he has been leading teams of UND students on 10-day field expeditions to survey glaciers high atop the Wind River Range of the Rocky Mountains in western Wyoming. The area contains the largest glacial mass in the lower 48 states — even VanLooy more than that of famed Glacier National Park in Montana.

As much as 70 percent of the life-giving water in this region comes from the mountain snowpack, and much of it eventually flows into Montana and North Dakota through the Missouri River system. On years when higher

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temperatures and dry conditions conspire to keep snowpack low, a vast network of glaciers — 63 in all — serve as an important backup to quench the region’s thirsty river valleys.

The problem: the glaciers are disappearing.

Melting away A Grand Forks native and assistant professor in the Department of Earth System Science and Policy (ESSP), VanLooy is interested in how much water these glaciers contribute to seasonal runoff, the rate at which they are melting, and how much longer they are likely to be around. He’s also working with UND Associate Professor of Geography Gregory Vandeberg to study the water quality of the glaciers.

“I couldn’t tackle all of the research I want to conduct in studying these glaciers if it were not for working across campus with Greg,” VanLooy stressed. “He is an excellent research partner.”

VanLooy says historical data combined with boots-on-the-ground observations and remote-sensing techniques indicate that the glaciers in this part of the Rockies — some

/ UND DISCOVERY / UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

A remote craggy wilderness nearly three vertical miles high, VanLooy’s research playground is rife with danger and furry neighbors, including black bears and mountain lions. His crew carries bear-repellent spray in their 80-pound backpacks as well as long metal “bear canisters” with all the food they’ll need: dried milk, jerky, granola and freezedried meals.

Then there’s the perils of the terrain — rock, ice and snow — with the ever-present threats of twisting an ankle, falling or getting smashed by a runaway boulder.

VanLooy called rock falls the biggest danger for his crew. This past summer, a minivansized boulder rolled toward them, stopping only when it smashed into a rock outcropping.

He said they also have to avoid falling into deep crevasses and so-called “moulins,” long, narrow tunnels or pipelines within glacial masses through which water flows.

“Putting together a research expedition like this is different than most any other kind,” VanLooy said. “There are just so many things to tackle. It’s a very active area but someone has to actually go up there and do the research.”

Two-day, one way VanLooy said Forest Service rules prohibit his team from using any type of mechanized vehicle to aid in the trek to the top of Wind River Range. Even helicopters are not allowed in higher elevations, apart from aircraft that specialized authorities use for rescue missions.

Chainsaws also are banned in an effort to keep the high wilderness as pristine as possible.

“So this means you have to go by horseback and foot to get to where the glaciers are,” VanLooy said.

Mules lug the equipment that’s not carried by the team members.

Once the local outfitter — Derrick Sellergren with Blucher Creek Outfitters — reaches his limit by horseback, it’s typically another five miles by foot to reach the edge of the glaciers, VanLooy noted.

He and his research team then become the pack mules, lugging everything they’ll need for survival, sustenance and research, includ-

ECOSYSTEMS: HOME AND AWAY ing flow meters, gauges and bottles to collect samples. It’s a two-day haul for the team.

What they consume in supplies during their missions is offset by the samples they collect and bring back on the return trip.

The students are well trained before they go, and VanLooy has nothing but kudos for their contributions.

“They were fantastic and physically fit,” he said of his most recent student crew. “They were beating me all over the place. I could not do it without them.”

Living a dream A Grand Forks Red River High School graduate, VanLooy spent his childhood dreaming of conquering the world’s most extreme environments.

“I always used to go outside as a kid and play in the snow, and that led to pretending I was on expeditions,” he said.

The dream soon turned to reality when VanLooy started joining his dad on recreational hikes through places such as Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota and remote island settings on Lake Superior.

He also fell in love with maps and began to develop an interest in glaciology. While at the University of Idaho as an undergraduate, he was leafing through an atlas searching places that would be fun for him and his dad to explore next. That’s when he came upon the Wind River Range in Wyoming, littered with vast glaciers, including Continental Glacier, a mass of ice two miles long by a half-mile wide.

“I remember thinking ‘Wow! — It would be cool to go backpacking there,’ and on top of that, there were glaciers.”

“And that’s where all of this really started to take off,” he said.

Field focus VanLooy’s first ascent to the high Rockies glaciers came in the summer of 2011. In four years, his teams have focused on Continental and Knife Point Glaciers, the latter of which his team visited this past summer.

“Our goal has been to look at as many glaciers as possible, but it is very difficult, and even to this point, we have only gotten to two,” he said. “Now that doesn’t mean we have not studied a lot of the other glaciers. There are remote-sensing methods that we incorporate (with the help of UND’s Vandeberg) and combine with our field data to do the study.”

Using pressure transducers, flow meters and a portable radar that’s dragged across the ice, VanLooy is able to calculate an extrapolation for other parts of the glacier field.

Continental Glacier is associated with 10 other glaciers and glacierettes in its vicinity, while the Knife Point area comprises five substantial ice masses. VanLooy figures that the glacial runoff of these two areas may be contributing as much as 35 percent of the stream flow to augment the surrounding area’s drinking and agricultural needs during the dry late summer season. If these glaciers disappear, the loss would be a critical hit to the ecosystem and community water needs.

VanLooy says his team’s field research has found that Continental Glacier is as much as

185 meters thick, containing more than 17 billion gallons of water in frozen form.

“What it comes down to is that all that water is going in to the Wind River, but there are still a lot more glaciers to study which are contributing just as much water or more,” he said. “We would like to get the rest of the data over the next few years.”

Important work VanLooy’s early missions into the Wind River Range were funded by his department and a UND Faculty Seed Grant, but more recently the U.S. National Forest Service has taken notice of his work and financially supported the research his team conducted this past summer.

VanLooy said his missions already have generated two published studies and one that’s currently under review, with two more planned from this summer’s work. He added that over the past 25 years there has been only a handful of other research campaigns similar to his that have resulted in published papers.

“This research is really important, but I think sometimes it gets overlooked,” he said.

“To get this kind of data, you really need boots on the ground, so you can combine the remote sensing information with the actual field work.

“The reason there haven’t been many research expeditions like ours is because it’s hard to get there.” n

Homeward bound VanLooy earned his bachelor’s degree in geography and cartography from Idaho. He also took a two-month backpacking and skiing expedition over the Juneau Ice Field in Alaska, where he learned about glaciology, biology, climatology and how it all intertwines.

He did his master’s degree work at Kansas State and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Utah after writing his dissertation on remote sensing of glaciers in the coastal ranges of British Columbia.

Through it all, though, the glaciers of the Wind River Range were always on his mind.

After a stint as a professor at Radford University in Virginia, VanLooy noticed that a position had opened up in UND’s ESSP Department back in Grand Forks — home to both him and his wife.

VanLooy jumped at the opportunity. He got the job and returned to Grand Forks in 2010.

It wasn’t long after he started at UND that he was able to get support from his department to plan an expedition to the Wind River Range.

Because of National Forest Service rules designed to preserve the wilderness environment, no mechanized vehicles could be used to reach the research site or carry gear. Transportation was by horseback as far as practical, and then it was typically another five miles on foot to the edge of the glaciers, with VanLooy and his team doubling as human pack mules. Photo courtesy of Jeff VanLooy.

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ECOSYSTEMS: HOME AND AWAY

Kathryn Yurkonis, (right) assistant professor of biology, discusses features of the Oakville Prairie Field Station during a Sept. 18 event recognizing the site’s importance to local ecology. Photo by Shawna Noel Schill.

A laboratory and a treasure UND and nature advocacy groups celebrate the designation of the Oakville Prairie Field Station as a new wildlife and grassland management area.

By David Dodds An important piece of North Dakota’s biological heritage that recently became even more important was celebrated Sept. 18 with a ceremony at the UND-controlled Oakville Prairie Field Station, west of the campus in Oakville and Fairfield Townships, N.D. There, the UND Biology Department joined public and private nature advocacy groups in welcoming a new era for the 960-acre plot of native tallgrass prairie as a North Dakota Game and Fish Department Wildlife Management Area, a Grand Forks County Prairie Project Grassland Management site, and an Audubon Important Bird Area.

UND President Robert Kelley was among

100 people on hand to celebrate the new designations.

“As we understand better the interactions between the systems within our plant and animal worlds, I think it helps us as human beings to understand our role in managing and helping to sustain these systems for the benefit of generations to come,” Kelley said.

Vital resource Since 1958, the field station has been a vital resource for UND’s education, research and outreach mission. It is among the largest of its kind and serves as a living natural database for understanding the ecology of the Northern Plains.

UND President Robert Kelley (left) shakes hands with Terry Steinwand, director of the State Game and Fish Department, at the Sept. 18 ceremony naming the Oakville Prairie Field Station as a North Dakota Game and Fish Wildlife Management Area, Grand Forks County Prairie Project Grassland Management Site, and Audubon Important Bird Area. Joining them at the podium was Isaac Schlosser, Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Biology. Photo by Shawna Noel Schill.

“We are interested in talking about not only this natural heritage that we have but also how can we use this natural heritage to better facilitate and support North Dakota society,” said Isaac Schlosser, UND Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Biology.

Kathryn Yurkonis, a grasslands ecologist at UND, added, “Insights gained from research at this site will help us better understand and manage North Dakota’s grassland and agricultural areas now and into the future.”

The event also recognized the support of multiple public and private stakeholders dedicated to developing a coordinated land management network across Grand Forks County.

“You can’t do it by yourself,” said Terry Steinwand, director of the North Dakota Game and Fish Department. “We can do way more together than we can separately. We just have to keep these kinds of partnerships going, and we can educate ourselves at the same time.”

Sarah Wilson, Audubon Society Conservation Program coordinator, agreed: “Without these partnerships and the community involvement, the protection of these lands would be extremely difficult.”

Pioneering efforts UND also used the event to remember two pioneering faculty members, Vera Facey and Paul Kannowski, both of whom recognized early the significance of the Oakville Prairie site to North Dakota biological history.

Kannowski, who died just two weeks prior to the event, was a longtime member of the UND Biology Department. Facey was a professor of botany at UND from 1947 to 1979.

Facey was aware of the site’s importance as far back as 1955, according to Schlosser.

“Professor Facey was far ahead of her time, because she was the one who said that this is a unique part of the heritage of North Dakota and that it needed to be protected,” he said.

Though UND biologists had been conducting research at the Oakville Prairie site since the late 1950s, it wasn’t until 2004 that Kannowski UND took full control of it. Schlosser credits Kannowski for making that happen, a nearly 40-year effort.

“Paul was politically astute,” Schlosser said.

“He was the one that pulled the strings to start getting control of this piece of land. n Facey

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ECOSYSTEMS: HOME AND AWAY

Birds, bears and the Bay UND biologists work with the American Museum of Natural History to integrate unmanned aircraft technology into a wildlife study in the Canadian Arctic.

In a portion of Manitoba, Canada, so remote you have to fly in by helicopter, a research team led by the University of North Dakota and the American Museum of Natural History spent the summer in the polar bear capital of the world deploying the latest tool — Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) — in a nearly five-decade-old ecological study.

As part of the “Hudson Bay Project,” a collaborative research program that includes partners from the U.S. and Canada, the group conducted nearly 90 test flights from Wapusk National Park to show that UAS can be used to noninvasively study the overabundant geese in the region and their impact on the tundra landscape. In addition to combining effectiveness and efficiency, the single unmanned aircraft used by the team generated more than 80,000 detailed images last June and July. UAS studies are also safer than foot surveys, which put researchers at risk of encounters with bears.

“This technology has propelled us well into the 21st century,” said Robert Rockwell, a research associate in the Museum’s Department of Ornithology and a senior scientist of the Hudson Bay Project. Rockwell, who has been counting geese in the area since the late 1960s, teamed up last year with UND biologists Susan Ellis-Felege, Robert Newman, Chris Felege, UAS expert Michael Corcoran, and students Andrew Barnas and Sam Hervey to explore the use of UAS at the remote Canadian camp.

“We have been able to enhance and extend our geographical coverage, and to do it in a way that precludes potential disturbances of the very ecosystem we are studying,” Rockwell said. “It also helps us avoid confrontation with the ever-present bears, the region’s top predators. The first year’s operations were a grand success by any measure, and I look forward to expanding our efforts in 2016 and beyond.”

Styrofoam flyer that launches via catapult and is programed to follow transects while taking photos at one-second intervals. The imagery is then stitched together to form a picture of the ground below. From about 250 feet up, the aircraft’s belly camera clearly captures snow geese (blue and white varieties) and their goslings, different types of vegetation and damaged areas, and other bird species like sandhill cranes, tundra swans, bald eagles, and herring gulls.

To gauge how the local wildlife responds as the aircraft flies nearby, the researchers placed video cameras near goose and eider duck nests. They found that the animals generally ignored the aircraft, even when in close proximity to the launch sites.

“Once we’re set up, the birds didn’t seem to pay attention to the aircraft,” said Ellis-Felege.

“But to confirm this, we are now reviewing camera footage and sound recordings from the nests to determine if they show any responses to this small aircraft flying above them.”

That is important not only to the nature of the work, but also to the park managers and the indigenous people who have a “don’t touch and don’t disturb” philosophy, said Rockwell.

“Using UAS allows us to respect those wishes and cultural considerations,” he said.

Before starting the study, the team underwent extensive training to receive a Special

Flight Operations Certificate. The flights are conducted through the approval of both Parks Canada and Transport Canada.

“Flight crews, including the biologists, initially received factory training that instructed them how to professionally operate the air vehicle, and they continue to build their science and aviation skills as the project moves forward,” Corcoran said.

Technology limits The technology does have limitations: The vehicle must be in sight at all times during flight, so helicopters are still necessary to transport the equipment to areas of interest that are far away from the electric-fenceprotected camp. But based on their initial tests, the researchers expect that UAS will be extremely beneficial in learning more about nesting and nest failure in the region — an increasingly important topic as the changing Arctic climate is causing bears to consume alternative food sources like geese and their eggs.

Unmanned aircrafts also could be used to study the area’s predators by identifying “day beds,” flattened grass areas that mark where polar and grizzly bears rested on land.

Researchers can then go on targeted field trips to collect hair left in the beds for genetic testing that provides details about the local population.

Funding for the study was provided by the North Dakota Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program, UND College of Arts and Sciences, UND Office of the Provost, Parks Canada and Wapusk National Park, the Central and Mississippi Flyway Councils, the Arctic Goose Joint Venture, and Anne Via. n

First permit The team is the first to be given permits to develop UAS technology in a national park in Canada. The new tool allows freedom to monitor the ecosystem from the air and greatly extends the range of monitoring activity, providing the kind of view and access previously only afforded by helicopters, but with much less noise and expense. The researchers’ vehicle of choice is a 5.5-pound

A catapault was used to launch an unmanned aircraft that recorded photographic surveys of birds from an altitude of about 250 feet in Canada’s Wapusk National Park. UND team members preparing for the last flight of the summer project included (from left) UAS specialist Mike Corcoran, graduate student Andrew Barnas, and biologist Susan Ellis-Felege. Photo by Chris Felege, UND Department of Biology.

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ENERGY AND ENGINEERING

Who says oil and water don’t mix?

Geothermal technology could offer significant savings in the development of North Dakota’s oil and gas resources.

By David Dodds Blame it on Popular Mechanics.

Or credit the magazine, however you want to look at it.

Just as it’s been trumpeting cutting-edge innovations in technology to the world since its first issue in 1902, it’s also been a source of more than a few sparks of inspiration and collaboration.

Case in point: a chance phone call from University of North Dakota Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Geology and Geological Engineering Will Gosnold to the vice president of research with oil and gas industry giant Continental Resources.

It was 2009, with North Dakota on the cusp of one of the nation’s largest shale formation oil booms ever, and Gosnold was eager to find someone in the industry to partner on an idea to generate clean geothermal power from hot water deep under the Earth’s surface.

Bolstered by support from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and his own decades-long research on subsoil water deposits and their temperatures in western North Dakota, Gosnold was poised to act.

He had heard that Continental Resources was launching a “water flood” project in Bowman County, North Dakota, where they would draw water out of the earth and inject it back into another oil-laden layer, forcing the petroleum to the surface.

Gosnold thought there might be potential to test his “Low-temperature Geothermal Power Project” by piggybacking on what Continental was doing in southwestern North Dakota.

At the time, a much smaller-scale version (not connected to the oil industry) of what Gosnold Gosnold was looking to do was already operating in Chena Hot Springs, Alaska. There, Bernie Karl, the owner of a resort, was using an Organic Rankine Cycle engine (ORC) to generate about 250 kilowatts of electricity using natural hot water from the earth.

When Gosnold’s call rang in Continental’s Oklahoma headquarters, the vice president of research just happened to be reading a Popular Mechanics article about the geothermal revolution taking place in Chena Hot Springs.

“I explained to him what I wanted to do, but he already had a good idea of what I was talking about,” Gosnold said. “He said, ‘Yeah, I think we’d be interested in giving that a try.’”

Serendipity?

“No kidding, extreme serendipity,” Gosnold said with a nod and a smile about the VP’s choice of reading material that day.

Test project Not long after that, Gosnold and a team of UND faculty and graduate students were working with Continental on a site in the Cedar Creek

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Oil Field of Bowman County. They also partnered with Access Energy, LLC, which supplied two 125-kilowatt ORC engines that converted nearly 900 gallons per minute of boiling hot water — pumped from the 3-kilometer-deep Lodgepole Formation — into clean geothermal electricity.

UND also worked with other regional partners, such as Olson Construction and Slope Electric Cooperative, to make the project happen. Basin Electric and the North Dakota Industrial Commission also put up money to support the work.

The results of the Bowman County test were encouraging. It showed that given enough fluid, in this case hot water, the process could produce energy that would be cost competitive with coal-fired power plants. Just as important, the geothermal technology could provide a more flexible and portable energy source that would require less investment in new infrastructure for regional power companies trying to meet industry demands.

Currently, in western North Dakota alone, five coal-fired power plants along the Missouri River provide all the power used in the state’s primary oil-producing zones. It’s anticipated that as much as 3.2 gigawatts might be needed to supply power to the Bakken and Three Forks Oil Fields over the next 30 years.

Gosnold’s team in the College of Engineering and Mines figures that a distributed network of relatively inexpensive and portable geothermal sites could preclude construction of new fossil fuel-burning power plants and the creation of a new power grid that would be unneeded in the future once oil activity ceases. Moreover, his research suggests that geothermal power would greatly reduce the 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide that’s expected to be released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels over a generation.

Good news UND’s test project in Bowman County is demonstrating success using just hot water drawn from the earth. But in order to make the process more feasible and attractive for use in places such as the Bakken, where the number of wells and deep deposits of fluids are more concentrated, Gosnold needs an ORC engine that could process water and oil at the same time.

Gosnold may have found exactly what he’s looking for in the form of a privately built ORC engine now sitting idle in Idaho. In the early 2000s, Chevron commissioned the development of that engine, which could simultaneously process water and oil. But the company eventually abandoned the project and told the developers to keep the finished product.

Gosnold recently reached out to the developers and got some good news: “They told me, ‘if you can find a use for this, we will let you have it for the cost of transportation.’”

Gosnold estimates that western North Dakota can produce sufficient quantities of hot water along with the oil that’s being extracted, based on studies of the geothermal potential of the Heart Butte Bakken Field.

He said that rate is 50 percent more than what is needed to make the geothermal process competitive with what is now being done with coal.

“This could supply all the power that they are ever going to need, plus when all the oil is gone, they can continue to produce power with the water,” Gosnold said.

National database Gosnold has been studying the hidden potential of geothermal energy locked deep within North Dakota soil since 1984. What he’s discovered over the years gave him, and colleagues such as UND Professor of Chemical Engineering Michael Mann, the incentive to keep studying.

During the past seven years, Gosnold’s team has obtained nearly $7 million for eight related geothermal projects from several sources: the DOE, the North Dakota Department of Commerce, Arizona Geologi-

ENERGY AND ENGINEERING cal Survey, the University of Minnesota and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. His group also has partnered with a number of those organizations as well as Southern Methodist University in Texas, Texas Tech, the University of Texas, Cornell University and the Geothermal Resources Council, to develop a national geothermal database.

“UND assembled and provided data from Nebraska, North Dakota and Minnesota for the database, in addition to working with SMU on the database templates for all 50 states,” Gosnold said.

The UND geothermal program has involved seven faculty members in four different engineering and science disciplines: chemical engineering, electrical engineering, geological engineering, and geology.

Since 2010, the team has produced 26 peer-reviewed papers and 62 presentations at professional meetings. Faculty involved in the program developed five graduate level courses covering different elements in heat flow and geothermal energy that are now offered in UND’s Harold Hamm School of Geology and Geological Engineering, part of the College of Engineering and Mines.

His work also has inspired a generation of UND graduate students who have gone on to win research awards and base their dissertations on what he started.

The UND geothermal program has produced five Ph.D.s and six master’s degrees, and has supported nine undergraduates with their studies. n

Springboard to the future

“It was critical to learn how to connect the material I learned in the classroom with outside research and then apply it to real-world challenges,” he said. “The icing on the cake is the professional colleagues and friendships I established at the EERC that are still being fostered today.”

The North Dakota Legislature established the NDPA in 2007, and Kringstad was named director in 2008 by the North Dakota Industrial Commission. The nonregulatory organization is tasked with facilitating the development of pipeline and processing infrastructure to meet growing levels of crude oil and natural gas production.

Since being hired, Kringstad has been extremely busy overseeing the planning, siting and construction of intrastate and interstate pipelines needed to enhance North Dakota’s energy resources and encourage their export.

“From a big-picture view, North Dakota’s pipeline infrastructure is still relatively young,” he said. “Going forward, there will be ongoing efforts to build additional pipeline systems to not only move products to consumers outside of the region, but also to expand the smaller gathering network in order to reduce flaring and safely move fluids within the producing fields of North Dakota.”

While the tasks keep piling on, Kringstad is well-equipped to handle the challenges and says he has UND and the EERC to thank for setting the stage for a successful career.

“I’m blessed to have lived in North Dakota my whole life, and I have every intention of staying here and focusing my career on the safe and efficient development of North Dakota’s vast energy resources,” he said.

The Energy & Environmental Research Center offers a critical launch pad to successful careers for UND students.

By Derek Walters “My time with the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) was, without a doubt, one of the pivotal moments that helped guide me to where I am today,” said Justin Kringstad, director of the North Dakota Pipeline Authority (NDPA) and former student employee at the EERC. A native of Bismarck, Kringstad graduated from the University of North Dakota in 2007 with a degree in geological engineering. He is just one of more than 350 students (undergraduate through postdoctoral) who have worked at the EERC in recent years, through its applied research programs, to receive on-the-job training.

“We provide opportunities for students to gain hands-on experience in their chosen field,” said Jim Sorensen, EERC senior research manager and Kringstad’s former supervisor. “During his time here, Justin was part of the EERC’s Plains CO2 Reduction Partnership team. He worked on our reservoir characterization and simulation project, which was focused on injecting large-scale CO2 volumes in the Broom Creek Formation in western North Dakota.”

Employment opportunities for students at Kringstad the EERC have ranged from multiple years of project work to summer cooperatives. In fact, a number of engineering students have utilized EERC project experience for graduate theses.

In addition to technical positions, the EERC also employs students in administrative and service roles.

“To work side by side with world-class experts in cutting-edge research facilities was exactly what I needed to push myself academically and professionally,” Kringstad said. “The character traits and professionalism I experienced during my time at the EERC are still influencing me today.”

Don’t settle The most valuable lesson he took from his EERC experience, Kringstad said, was that to be successful, people need to keep expanding their knowledge base and not settle for the status quo.

Diverse perspectives One of the EERC’s current student employees, Tyler Newman, a senior mechanical engineering major, is part of the EERC-UND Student Collaboration and Engagement Program, sponsored by Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Tom DiLorenzo.

The program is fostering a strong link between the EERC and UND academic programs, such as engineering and geology.

Newman says that the most important thing he’s taken away from his time at the EERC is the collaborative learning environment.

“The EERC has taught me how important Newman group work is,” he said. “It has allowed me to develop stronger communication skills, challenge assumptions, refine understanding through discussion and explanation, and manage my time effectively.

“The employees at the EERC share diverse perspectives, allowing them to tackle much more complex tasks than any one person could do individually.” n

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HEALTH AND WELLNESS to the body as long as they are safely clothed within the membranes of cells. However, during an infection or injury, these cells burst open and release self-molecules or alarmins into the medium outside of cells where they are not supposed to be. The body’s immune system sees the release of these self-molecules as a danger; the self-molecules, or alarmins, sound the alarm to mobilize the immune system to attack the cells and tissue where the alarmins are present — an autoimmune response — leading to inflammation that causes fever, swelling and mouth or facial pain.

Sjögren’s syndrome

The National Institutes of Health has awarded more than $1.7 milion to UND biomedical scientist Brij Singh to continue his research on factors affecting saliva secretion. Photo by Jackie Lorentz.

Dry mouth: exploring a complex health issue

By Denis MacLeod University of North Dakota researchers in the School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) are working to improve the oral health of Americans.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently granted more than $1.7 million to biomedical scientist Brij Singh, a professor in the SMHS Department of Basic Sciences, to continue his work on how calcium levels in cells control the secretion of saliva.

Almost 9 million Americans suffer from the common problem of “dry mouth” or xerostomia, a result of decreased saliva flow from under-functioning salivary glands. Patients with dry mouth suffer symptoms of varying severity, ranging from being an annoyance to a major detriment to general health. Chronic dry mouth significantly increases the risk of developing dental caries as well as other oral diseases.

For over 15 years, Singh has been studying a gene known as TRPC1. The new NIH grant will support Singh’s research on the role of TRPC1 in saliva secretion in normal and disease conditions such as Sjögren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system attacks the body’s own cells and tissues. In Sjögren’s syndrome, the immune system attacks the moisture-secreting glands of the eyes and mouth. It can also affect

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joints, the thyroid gland, kidneys, liver, lungs, skin, and nerves.

“There is a critical need to characterize TRPC1 function and to define the molecular pathways involved in regulating saliva secretion in normal and disease conditions,” Singh said. “We have the required tools to successfully complete this project. This information will be critical to explore potential therapeutic interventions and strategies to treat salivary gland hypofunctions.”

Funding for Singh’s work is supported by a five-year R01 grant from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, an institute of the NIH. The Research Project Grant (R01) is the original and historically oldest grant mechanism used by the NIH.

Role of ‘alarmins’ In addition to his research on TRPC1, Singh is working with a fellow UND biomedical scientist in the Department of Basic Sciences, Assistant Professor Bibhuti Mishra, to fund their research on the role played by proteins called “galectins” in salivary gland inflammation. This research is being supported by separate NIH funding — a $381,500 two-year grant.

Mishra’s recent studies suggest that galectins, specifically galectin-3 and galectin-9, act as novel alarmins, which are essentially selfmolecules, bits of cells that present no harm

/ UND DISCOVERY / UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

Sjögren’s syndrome is an autoimmune disease of the oral system that leads to salivary gland destruction. Almost 3 percent of the U.S. population is affected by salivary gland hypofunction, a complex disorder resulting from diseases and also a common side effect of drug therapy. However, the etiology as to why salivary glands are destroyed in diseases such as Sjögren’s syndrome is still not known.

Recent findings have provided strong evidence that, like many inflammatory disorders, Sjögren’s syndrome has its origin in an overactive immune response against salivary tissue, thus causing glandular destruction. However, the mechanisms underlying infiltration of immune cells and development of an inflammatory response in salivary glands are not fully understood.

In the current grant, Mishra and Singh propose that both galectin-3 and galectin-9 function as alarmins and contribute to the pathophysiology of autoimmune or inflammatory disorders like Sjögren’s syndrome.

The role of alarmins during salivary gland inflammation, injury or disease has never been studied. These are highly interdisciplinary studies because of the unique collaboration between Mishra and Singh.

“The overall impact of these studies is that it will identify novel alarmins contributing to exacerbation of salivary gland inflammation and destruction,” Mishra said. “These alarmins may be targeted for treatment of Sjögren’s syndrome and possibly other inflammatory conditions.”

The NIH A part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH is the nation’s medical research agency and the largest source of funding for medical research in the world.

The mission of the NIH is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability. n

HEALTH AND WELLNESS

Following her heart to care and knowledge Nursing student Shelby Poitra keeps an open mind while nurturing a passion for research in her field.

By Carrie Sandstrom University of North Dakota nursing student Shelby Poitra may not have graduated from college yet, but she’s already making her mark on the field.

This summer, Poitra was one of 12 interns at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation (MHIF) at Abbott-Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. The only nursing student in the program, Poitra brought a unique point of view to the research-intensive 10-to-11-week stint at the MHIF. “I know that the students MHIF likes to select are more the pre-med track, and I’m nursing,” Poitra said. “(But) research has always been a huge thing in my life, and I thought, ‘Why not?’ It doesn’t hurt to apply.”

And apply she did.

During the approximately three months she spent at AbbottNorthwestern, Poitra analyzed the records of 50 patients to evaluate the impact of using an Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) machine — a machine that oxygenates blood, bypassing the heart and lungs to allow the organs to rest and heal —on patients with septic shock.

interest in medical research was sparked by a desire to learn more about issues that can disproportionately impact American Indians.

Although her heritage helped pique her interests, Poitra has since made researching a vast array of subjects part of her college career. In addition to her summer research endeavors, she has also been involved in several on-campus studies, including one on Alzheimer’s and another studying addiction in zebra fish.

Poitra says her exposure to heart issues and her work with the MHIF will benefit her in more ways than one. In addition to allowing her to pursue her interests in research, her summer internship helped prepare her for fall nursing classes at UND, where she, along with her fellow fourth-semester nursing students, are focusing on cardiology and completing clinical hours on Altru Hospital’s cardiology floor.

However, nursing wasn’t always Poitra’s chosen career track. She spent her first few years at school pursuing a pre-med degree. But in her junior year, with only one class left to finish her pre-med class requirements, Poitra realized she wasn’t happy. Although she had never been thrilled with the idea of going into nursing, she kept an open mind and evaluated her options.

“I ended up talking to a nursing student, and I asked her about the nursing program,” Poitra said. “She told me a lot of great things about it and how well respected this program is … everything just sort of went from there.”

Difference maker Now, Poitra is nearing the end of her time in UND’s nursing program. She points to early childhood experiences as the source of her interest in the medical field.

“Growing up, one of my aunts was a nurse, and I always liked seeing her going to my grandparents and taking care of them, giving advice, the family turning to her when they had questions,” Poitra said. “I felt like that was always just a special thing in our family — I knew that’s what I wanted to be, too.”

Following graduation, with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing in hand, Poitra hopes to continue doing research, and she’s thinking about pursing a Doctor of Nursing Practice. For Poitra, the future is all about keeping her mind open.

“There’s a lot out there,” Poitra said. “And the passion that I have for research, it’s like, if it’s going to make a difference for someone someday and it needs to be researched, I want to be a part of that.” n

Good experience The results of her research revealed that patients with septic shock had a lower mortality when treated with ECMO, and that ECMO may prolong end-of-life care for fatally ill patients with septic shock.

An abstract with Poitra’s findings was accepted by Extracorporeal Life Support Organization, an international nonprofit consortium focusing on therapies for support of failing organ systems. A poster with her research was displayed in Atlanta last September. “(The internship) was a really good experience overall,” Poitra said. “I didn’t feel like I needed to be a pre-med student to be there and do the things that I did.”

Change of heart Poitra grew up in St. John, N.D., a small town in north-central North Dakota near the Canadian border, and is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. She says that, initially, some of her

Early childhood experiences, particularly with an aunt who was a nurse, spurred Shelby Poitra’s interest in health care. Photos by Shawna Noel Schill.

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SKY AND SPACE

Go for launch UND’s homegrown miniature satellite, CubeSat, ranks at the top of NASA proposals set for future space mission.

“Our proposal was chosen as the top selection nationwide for 2014-2015,” Straub said.

(See NASA list ranking this year’s CubeSat project selections at http://www.nasa.gov/ directorates/heo/home/CSLI_selections. html#2015) Straub says part of the mission — once the UND CubeSat is in orbit — is to fly over Grand Forks, where it will be able to capture imagery and download its data to a receiving and control station located in Streibel Hall, part of UND’s John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences complex.

The number of students involved in the

By Juan Miguel Pedraza It could be a kid’s LEGO® creation, about the size of a boutique tissue box.

Don’t be fooled.

The University of North Dakota’s OpenOrbiter One CubeSat — recently given a “go for launch” by NASA — is a space-based research device capable of much more than its diminutive size lets on.

“We got awarded a launch, very exciting, indeed,” said Computer Science Ph.D. candidate Jeremy Straub, who’s coordinating the University’s CubeSat project. “We expect that it’ll be integrated into a U.S. launch vehicle for a future International Space Station (ISS) resupply mission. It’ll go out from the ISS NanoRacks CubeSat launch facility.”

The UND CubeSat led the list of projects of its kind selected by NASA.

UND’s OpenOrbiter One CubeSat is held by project coordinator Jeremy Straub. Photo by Jackie Lorentz.

UND robot scores with NASA Once again, a team of University of North Dakota student engineers scored top marks in the 2015 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Robotic Mining Competition.

The UND team took fourth place, competing against 50 others from universities across the nation, in the Mining Competition at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. UND also took first place in the outreach activity component.

This is the third year the UND team scored top awards in this NASA competition. The team captured first place in 2011 and second in 2013.

The competition’s objective was to design and build a robot capable of collecting and depositing lunar dirt. UND’s team constructed the only robot capable of mining icy regolith, with a traction control system that made it one of the best-driving robots in the competition.

The competition also requires the teams to conduct outreach activities to increase public understanding of NASA’s importance and to generate interest in math and science among K-12 students.

The team included electrical engineering students Dustin Rudnick, Anamoose, N.D.; Jacob Berry, Cambridge, Minn.; and Tate Messmer, Mesa, Ariz.; and mechanical engineering students Nicholas Allen, Buffalo, Minn.; Austin Cote, Bottineau, N.D.; Kyle Kunke, Osseo, Minn.; Pushkara Jayasekera, Hokandara, Sri Lanka; Anne Mayer, Fargo; Alec Redmann, Bismarck; Jordan Senff, Grand Forks; and Luke Spray, Gonvick, Minn. Faculty advisors for the team are Naima Kaabouch of

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CubeSat project, at any one time, has ranged from under 10 to 40 or 50. Over the course of the program’s life, about 80 students have been involved directly and an additional 100 or so have been involved more peripherally, Straub explains.

“We’ve gotten people from all over the place, every college and a smattering of departments, including the College of Business and Public Administration, the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and the School of Law, involved,” said Computer Science Department Chair Ron Marsh, who serves as principal investigator on the launch proposal.

“It’s a great experience.”

The CubeSat concept, which originated in the late 1990s at Stanford University and California Polytechnic, is about learning by doing.

“This will be North Dakota’s first spacecraft,” Straub said. “We’re also collaborating on the payload with a faculty member and a few students from Northland Community and Technical College based in Minnesota.”

To date, CubeSats have largely been targeted at low-Earth orbit.

“The altitude that the spacecraft is launched into and the current level of solar pressure determine the orbit, given the small satellite’s characteristics,” Straub said. “Operational life may range from a few months to a few years; however, longer missions are possible.”

CubeSats typically receive an orbit that is pretty close to the orbit of the primary spacecraft that they are “catching a ride” with. n

the Department of Electrical Engineering, and Jeremiah Neubert and Surojit Gupta of the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

The UND project was sponsored by North Dakota Space Consortium, School of Engineering and Mines Dean’s Office, Department of Electrical Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost; Student Organization Funding Agency, and a number of private companies, including Emerson. n

UND’s entry was one of the best-driving robots in NASA’s mining competition.

Photo courtesy of the College of Engineering and Mines.

BUSINESS AND POLITICS

“A labor of love” Each summer, Dana Harsell gets the last word in politics through Governing North Dakota, the only state resource of its kind, which he co-edits — for free.

By Carrie Sandstrom In addition to teaching State and Local Government at UND, Political Science Professor Dana Harsell also wrote the book on it — at least for North Dakota.

Harsell serves as a co-editor for Governing North Dakota alongside Neil Howe, who heads up the project from the North Dakota Studies Program at the State Historical Society.

This year marks the 22nd edition of the book, which covers everything about North Dakota government — from recent referendums and the State Supreme Court to photos of every state legislator. The book is released every two years, following the legislative session, allowing it to include new state laws, changes in budgeting and taxation, and updates to information about state officials.

Governing North Dakota is published by the North Dakota Studies Program in collaboration with the Bureau of Governmental Affairs at UND, and also has received financial support from the state legislature. Roots for the book can be traced back as far as 1950, when Professor Walter Kaloupek wrote a state and local government textbook for North Dakota’s Flickertail Girls State, an annual summer leadership and citizenship program sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary and held on the UND campus for a week in June.

According to Howe, the first edition of the book was published in 1973 as a project led by Lloyd Omdahl, professor emeritus of political science and public administration at UND and former North Dakota lieutenant governor. Omdahl served as editor of the book for the first 18 editions, and even today much of the book’s content is Omdahl’s original work.

Howe attributes the book’s longevity to its comprehensive content and the need in the state for such a resource.

“This is really the only text, the only content that teachers would have to teach North Dakota government to high school students,” Howe said. “There really is no other source in one place where they can get this information.”

Caught the torch Governing North Dakota is used as a textbook for students in fourth grade, eighth grade, and high school who are taking North Dakota Studies courses. It is also used as a supplement for college courses on state and

local government, and it still is used each summer during North Dakota Girls State.

Harsell and Howe took over the project in the early 2000s when Omdahl “passed the torch” to them, according to Harsell. For the past eight years, publication of the book has been led out of the North Dakota Studies Program under Howe. Howe, from his position in Bismarck, does most of the editing and graphic work for the book, while Harsell works on verifying information and writes a chapter on the budget.

Between the two of them, it takes about a summer to put a new edition together, starting their work on the next edition in April

following the end of the legislative session and sending the book to print in the fall.

“I like to talk about this a lot as a labor of love,” Harsell said. “I don’t earn any money from this. This is something I’m passionate about.”

Modernized The original Governing North Dakota was a black and white, largely text-based book. The latest edition uses bright color schemes and illustrative info-graphics to offset sections of text. In the future, Harsell said, they would like to continue to modernize the book and perhaps digitize it to make it even more accessible.

“In a lot of ways, this is seen as a service to the state,” Harsell said. “And I think it fits in well with the University’s mission of serving ‘the state, the country, and the world community through teaching, research, creative activities and service.’”

Harsell has held a longtime interest in state government, stemming from a belief that state politics can be “far more interesting” than national politics. Harsell said he’s inclined to agree with Justice Louis D. Brandeis, who once called states laboratories of democracy — places where new ideas can be tested and improved.

“It’s important to give people the information they need to participate in governance to be able to get engaged,” Harsell said. “(Governing North Dakota) is one place people can go to learn about the structure of government.”

Get engaged

“It’s important to give people the information they need to participate in governance and get engaged. Governing North Dakota is one place people can go to learn about the structure of government.”

In addition to serving as a resource for citizens by consolidating state government information into one location, Harsell says the book has also been useful for members of government themselves, and is provided to members of the legislature.

Governing North Dakota is also given to all new UND professors, according to Harsell, and copies are provided to libraries across the state for public use.

“I think a lot of people are willing to opt out of the process,” Harsell said. “But I always tell my students, I don’t have any political agendas for them except that they be engaged … That stems from my belief that the more voices we have to inform the policy process, the result is better policy.”

Harsell says education on governance, like that provided in Governing North Dakota, can make a big difference in participation in governance: the more people who participate in the process, the better the process works for the people. n

— Dana Harsell Photo by Jackie Lorentz

UND DISCOVERY / AUTUMN/WINTER 2015 /

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SPOTLIGHT ON STUDENTS Advance! Advance!

Marcia Mikulak (left) and her students meet with cacique (chief) Marcos Xukurú (center) to discuss the history and activism of the Xukurú people. From left, they are Benjamin Davis, Amy Rassier, and Joshua Everett. Photo courtesy of Marcia Mikulak.

Brazilian awakening UND students, under the tutelage of anthropologist Marcia Mikulak, learn introspection and identity while fighting for indigenous rights of the Xukurú people.

By David Dodds Three University of North Dakota students, along with their instructor, Associate Professor of Anthropology Marcia Mikulak, spent parts of their summers in Brazil, getting an up-close and personal look at the plight of the Xukurú nation — an indigenous people who have spent years fighting to retain their constitutional rights.

The students: Benjamin “Ben” Davis, Sartell, Minn., majoring in international studies, philosophy and honors; Amy Rassier, a native of Sidney, Mont., who majored in political science and international studies and minored in Spanish; and Joshua Everett, Grand Forks, majoring in anthropology and social work, were personal guests in the home of cacique (Chief) Marcos Xukurú with his family.

“These students had the opportunity to gain an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the Xukurú people in northeastern Brazil by living and working alongside them throughout the two-week experience,” Mikulak said. “During this time, students experienced firsthand how to respect and value human diversity.

“It is my long-term research and collaboration with the Xukurú that has made it possible to take students with me to share in my work as an anthropologist.”

The UND students participated in a Xukurú political march, in which more than 5,000 people commemorated the 1998 assassination of former Xukurú cacique Xição Xukurú (father of Marcos Xukurú) and demonstrated in support of Xukurú efforts to reclaim their sovereign rights and lands. The event focused on the need to defend the Earth from environmental devastation. It also addressed political agendas within the Brazilian Nation-State that seek, through congressional and presidential approval, to remove indigenous rights from the Brazilian constitution.

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Before the march, Marcos Xukurú addressed the crowd. The translation of Marcos’ speech is here: “We are here in nature — the encantadas (ancestral spirits) are happy that we are here. I am very happy that all of you have come here today, of your own volition, to defend our territory with us. This is not just a march we are making today, this is a march with an objective: to walk with the intent to cross over the problems that appear in our lives so that we can advance each day and with each Assembleia. This march is about consciousness. We are marching into the city of Pesqueira, advancing with the encantadas, with their protection and illumination, which is always with us so that we can continue to defend our rights to our land and our way of life. All of you are walking on the same road that Cacique Xição walked and where he was assassinated, where his blood was spilt. That same blood returned and it now pulses in our veins, giving us courage to continue so that our fight for our ancestral lands and our Xukurú identity will continue. Advance! Advance!”

In their own words: After taking part in the Xukurú march, one of the UND students, Ben Davis, reflected on the momentous days’ events in his own words: “ ‘Listen to the trees,’ said casique Marcos. ‘They are happy because each one of you is here today.’ He was standing on top of the government-imposed gate that marks where Xukuru land officially begins, standing and showing the freedom of his povo, his people. “‘Advance,’ we cheered together, referring to both the povo and our task that day. The people were advancing politically, claiming their rights to their territory, showing their unity as an indigenous nation.

And they were advancing literally, marching from their land to the city of Pesquiera.

“It was to participate in that march, to advance in solidarity, that we were listening to the trees that day.

“We marched alongside 5,000, participating in a process much larger than ourselves. The march was a kind of embodied resistance: against years of oppression — by the colonizers, the missionaries, and the nation-state, against individualism, against the privatization of the sacred land. It was a celebration: of Xukurú identity, of the strength of the collective, of the relationship between the povo and the land, their land. And for us it was an opportunity to learn about the advancement of a nation through participation in collective action.

“We began at 2 p.m. under the blaze of the Brazilian sun. Walking downhill, holding hands, we moved to the rhythm of the group. Rushing forward with spirit, in spurts, we followed the leaders of the march.

“From the gate to the city, Xukurú youth led the march. Thus, they were forming their collective historical identity. ‘I am not afraid to be Xukurú,’ a young girl’s shirt read. It would be fair if she were afraid — Marcos’ father, cacique at the time, was assassinated in 1998. Marcos escaped an attempted assassination in 2002. A bill in the current congress threatens to expropriate Xukurú land. And yet, the shirt declared the opposite: ‘Identity’ was on the back.

“That night we spoke with Marcos at his house, where he had invited us to stay. With patience and attention, he discussed the importance of learning the history of the Xukurú people, and the march as a window to learn about the identity of his povo.

“We were (re)forming and (de)constructing our identities, too. Like most of our experience with the Xukurú, this was a relational process.

We marched in relation to the trees, to the land, to the incantados, to one another. We are all of us connected. Beginning our own relations with the Xukurú, we advanced as a collective, calling into question the individualism of our own nation-state. We keep in mind these reflections, and many others, as we move forward here in Brazil.” n

FOCUS ON FACULTY

Amazing antennas

By David Dodds For many who grew up in the “dark ages” of TV and radio transmission, antennas were the all-important conduits between the airwaves and what appeared on the screen or blared from speakers.

Whether they were huge T-shaped outcroppings on rooftops or the so-called “rabbit ears” on top of the living room set, antennas were the central nervous system of family home entertainment for much of the 20th century.

But that was just one application.

Fast-forward to today, with the advent of wireless technologies and microsatellites you might think antennas had gone the way of the VCR or the rotary phone.

But Sima Noghanian, an associate professor and chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering, says the days of antennas are not numbered — they’re needed more than ever, and in many cases much smaller than we remember, so small that you don’t even notice them.

“I do research in the area of antenna design,” she said. “For many people, it may not sound interesting. However, this is a field that combines the knowledge in math and science as well as art and creativity.”

Spacesuit application Along with any wireless device comes a need for antennas. However, while electronics have been greatly miniaturized, there are fundamental limitations on size reduction for antennas.

Noghanian says that today, many wireless applications are heading toward “wearable” designs: “The solution we propose is to integrate antennas with clothing so we take advantage of the area available. We focused on space suit applications, as UND has a strong research group in this area. Also, it offers challenges such as harsh environments and restrictions on size due to the fact the antennas are surrounded by pipes and metallic rings.”

Noghanian works with Pablo de León of UND Space Studies and the principal investigator on Noghanian the spacesuit project; Isaac Chang, with UND’s School of Entrepreneurship; and her husband, Reza Fazel-Rezai, also a member of UND’s Electrical Engineering faculty.

Noghanian also is involved in another project that’s looking at new materials and composites for 3D-printed antennas. For this project, she is working with Chang and Mechanical Engineering faculty member Surojit Gupta.

“We have worked on several materials and technology developments on antennas printed using 3D printers, as well as new materials that Dr. Gupta has developed,” Noghanian said.

Student research Noghanian is proud of the high-quality research performed by undergraduate and graduate students in her laboratory. Currently, she is supervising nine students who are completing capstone work on wearable antennas, 3D printed antennas materials, wireless channel optimization for unmanned aerial systems, and a third project involving wireless power transference to small satellites, such as CubeSats. She also oversees the work of one master’s degree student and three Ph.D. students, working on wearable and 3D printed antennas, and wireless power transfer. n

The UND Digital Press releases The War with the Sioux The University of North Dakota Digital Press recently published the first English translation of Karl Jakob Skarstein’s The War with the Sioux: Norwegians against Indians 1862-1863.

Melissa Gjellstad, associate professor of Norwegian, and UND alumna Danielle Mead Skjelver, an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Maryland University College, translated the text. Richard Rothaus, currently the interim vice chancellor for academic affairs with the North Dakota University System, and Dakota Goodhouse, an American Indian writer and instructor at United Tribes Technical College, provided new introductory material for the book.

“I first encountered Skarstein’s riveting narrative on the U.S.-Dakota War in 2007,” Skjelver said. “I had never read anything like it. Translating this work was fascinating and rewarding because of the book’s unique focus on a specific immigrant population, and because Skarstein admirably attempts to get at the action and emotion of the many sides of this conflict.”

Skarstein’s The War with the Sioux tells the story of Norwegian immigrants, American soldiers, and Lakota and Dakota Indians as they sought to protect their ways of life during the Dakota War of 1862-1864. Skarstein drew upon largely untapped Norwegian-language sources to Gjellstad describe life on the Northern Plains during these tumultuous years.

The Dakota War stands as one of the most overlooked conflicts in American History.

Happening at the same time as the American Civil War, the Dakota War featured significant fighting, tactical brilliance and strategic savvy set in the open landscape of the Northern Plains in Minnesota and North Dakota.

“The American experience of Norwegian immigrants has been a red thread that has woven Skjelver through my scholarship and teaching in Scandinavian Studies,” Gjellstad said. “It began early in my childhood, growing up in rural North Dakota, and has spun into rich new connections, thanks to the collaborations of fellow scholars from the Northern Plains as we worked to bring Skarstein’s volume to an American audience.”

The translation of the book was funded by the Norwegian government’s Norwegian Literature Abroad program and is available as a free download or as a printed book on Amazon.

The Digital Press at UND is a creative reimagining of the traditional university press. It publishes innovative and timely works in archaeology and on topics intersecting with life in North Dakota and the Northern Plains.

To download the book, go to the UND Digital Press webpage at www.thedigitalpress.org. n

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The University of North Dakota Citation II Research Aircraft, dubbed “UND Cloud One,” returned to Grand Forks recently after a two-week mission in the skies of Florida.

“We studied thunderstorm anvils, sampling the clouds up to an altitude of 40,000 feet,” said David Delene, associate research professor and principal investigator on this mission. The storm cloud sampling was done concurrently with one of the most advanced radar systems in the world, the U.S. Navy’s Mid-Course Doppler Radar. Now comes the hardest part of this data-intensive research: “We’ll be analyzing the gigabytes of airborne observations, reviewing the hundreds of gigabytes of images and videos, and understanding the terabytes of radar data,” said Delene, who managed the aircraft’s data-acquisition instruments and computers during the mission. “The unique data set produced by the field project provides exceptional opportunities for UND students to contribute to advancing our understanding of thunderstorms, weather and climate. New discoveries come from new observations.”

The data set that UND Cloud One helped to create in its latest storm research mission used some of the most advanced instrumentation in the world, he noted.

“UND students have the unique opportunity to work with leading scientists to advance our understanding of cloud physics and make new discoveries,” said Mike Poellot, Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and the jet’s overall principal investigator. Several other people, all from the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences, participated in this mission: Wayne Schindler, a UND alumnus, research jet pilot, and pilot-in-command of the mission; Jonathan Sepulveda, a UND alumnus and research jet pilot and technician; Jamie Ekness of Shepherd, Mont., a master’s degree student in atmospheric sciences; and Nick Gapp of Fargo, an undergraduate major in atmospheric sciences.

By Juan Miguel Pedraza