On Halloween night, 2003, a young boy named Vincent Ledvina is walking home after a cold midwestern evening of trick-or-treating. He looks up and sees something bright and green shimmering across the sky. “Is that the aurora?” he asks his parents. They aren’t sure. But young Ledvina, having seen the wonders of the upper atmosphere with his own eyes for the first time, is hooked.

Now a second-year Ph.D. student in Space Physics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Ledvina studies the aurora borealis. He is working to understand the intricacies of these beautiful—and even life-changing—natural phenomena using both NASA and citizen-sourced data. 

Mack Hughes defended his thesis on March 5th, titled “Direct and cascading effects of sea star wasting on rocky intertidal communities.”

In 2013 and 2014, sea star wasting caused a mass mortality event on the coasts from Alaska to Mexico. This phenomenon decimated many populations, affecting twenty species of sea stars.

Lia Ferguson is a third-year graduate student pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction at UAF. Her thesis, a work of prose entitled I’m Riding My Bike in the Dark, is set to be defended this semester. I was lucky enough to talk to Lia recently about her work, writing, and journey to UAF.

Angela Linn defended her Ph.D. dissertation “Preserving Reflections of Ourselves: The Past, Present, and Future of Alaska’s Museums” in October 2023. Read more to learn about her work on the history and future of museums in Alaska.

Isaac Van Flein’s M.S. thesis examines mouse behavior in models of OCD and Autism.

On Monday, March 20th, 2023, biologist Alex Cornwell successfully defended his M.S. thesis entitled “The role of cystathionine γ-lyase and hydrogen sulfide in glucose transporter GLUT1 expression in macrophages.” His project takes an in-depth look at cellular mechanisms to better understand the role of hydrogen sulfide in immune processes.