Monday, April 27, 2020

UNH received its largest-ever research contract from NASA, $107.9 MILLION to develop a space-based instrument that will study coastal ecosystems near the Gulf of Mexico.

Joseph Salisbury, research associate professor of Earth sciences, leads this interdisciplinary project to develop GLIMR (Geosynchronous Littoral Imaging and Monitoring Radiometer). Shortly after GLIMR was announced, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine and U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen visited campus for an up-close look at the university’s Space Science Center and the faculty members, researchers and students engaged in NASA partnerships.

NASA and UNH
Top, from left: UNH President Jim Dean; Harlan Spence, director of the UNH Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space; NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine; U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen. Bottom: Professor of physics Roy Torbert shows Shaheen and Bridenstine an instrument from the successful Multiscale Magnetosphere Mission.


 

ECCE team
Photo: N.H. DOE

UNH will lead a major preschool development initiative in New Hampshire, funded by a $26.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The grant, led by assistant professor of family studies and human development Kim Nesbitt (left), is the single largest to a faculty member in the College of Health and Human Services. See more about this project on page 24.
 


 

UNH launched the Center for Acoustics Research and Education, bringing together expertise across wide-ranging disciplines with an initial focus on environmental acoustics. Jennifer Miksis-Olds, School of Marine Science and Ocean Engineering research professor, is center director.
 


 

UNH’s GEBCO-Nippon Foundation Alumni team — alumni and industry partners and advisors based at UNH’s Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping — won the $4 million Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE for a pair of autonomous ocean mapping vessels.
 

XPRIZE

 


 

NOAA tapped UNH and four other ocean science institutions to explore an estimated three billion acres of U.S. ocean territory as part of the new Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute.
 


Diane Foster

 

Diane Foster, professor of mechanical and ocean engineering at UNH, took the helm of UNH’s School of Marine Science and Ocean Engineering in spring 2019.

 

 


 

UNH joined the University of the Arctic — an international network of universities and organizations dedicated to Arctic education and research— in fall 2019, marking an official pledge to continue and expand on its polar expertise.