$2M grant in forecast for Siena
Written on February 17, 2010 by admin
COLONIE — Siena College may be best known for its basketball program, but according to the federal government, the school is also tops in space research.
Along with U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, school officials announced Monday that its School of Science landed a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to fund its space weather research program that collects data from Antarctica.
Siena says the federal grant, which was awarded back in the fall as part of $3 billion in federal stimulus funding given out through the NSF, is the largest in school history.
“When you get these grants, they look at the institution,” said Allan Weatherwax, a physics professor at the school who is the principal investigator on the project and associate dean of the School of Science. “We’re doing first-class, first-rate research here at the college.”
The Antarctic program is officially called Polar Experiment Network for Geospace Upper-atmosphere Investigations, or PENGUIn. It is a collaboration between Siena and a group of other schools including Dartmouth, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.
The polar caps, including Antarctica, are the best place to study space weather, which essentially is solar wind, the stream of electrons and protons from the sun that can have a profound impact on Earth and its upper atmosphere. That’s because the polar caps act as a “funnel” for solar wind.
Weatherwax and a team of students in the physics department collect data from the school’s Antarctic station, as well as from radar equipment on top of the college’s science building. They are also building a small satellite on its Loudonville campus that will be launched by NASA to study gamma rays from lightning.
Space weather research is important to the scientific community and the government because solar wind can impact satellites and space missions such as the Space Shuttle, and it can even impact the electrical grid on Earth.
“We want to predict when these events happen,” Weatherwax said.
The student-built passive radar antennas on the roof of the school’s Morrell Science Center are used to collect data that are brought together with data being collected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell University. Another device is also measuring the accuracy of GPS, or global positioning systems. Weatherwax also showed off a replica model of the $1 million “Firefly” satellite that is about 2 feet tall, which is designed to be smaller and cheaper than traditional satellites that can cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Tonko, an engineer by trade who sits on the House’s Committee on Science and Technology, said he was thrilled that an institution best known for its liberal arts curriculum is also a leader in high-tech environmental and energy research. He was also glad to see stimulus funds being put toward science research, which he believes will pay economic dividends down the road.
“This is the way to work through a difficult period of recession,” Tonko said. “This opens the doors of opportunity.”
Larry Rulison can be reached at 454-5504 or by e-mail at lrulison@timesunion.com
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