NIU Today

Members of the NIU campus community gathered April 19 to witness more than 200 undergraduate research, artistry and community engagement presentations by student leaders and scholars from a variety of disciplines. With more than 900 people in attendance, the seventh annual Undergraduate Research and Artistry Day and the third annual Community Engagement Showcase became not...

Having just returned from a highly successful research expedition in Antarctica, NIU geologists Ross Powell and Reed Scherer appeared as guests during Tuesday evening’s broadcast of Chicago Tonight on WTTW11. The interview and a Q&A with the researchers is available online. Powell led a National Science Foundation-funded science team that became the first ever to...

Using a specially designed hot-water drill to cleanly bore through a half mile of ice, a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded team of researchers, led by NIU’s Ross Powell and including other faculty and students, has become the first ever to reach and investigate the “grounding zone” along the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, where ice, land...

It’s a continent of extremes, boasting arguably the harshest environment on the planet. And it will become a research laboratory for three NIU geology students who will arrive in Antarctica in early January. They’re taking part in an important, collaborative research project that is funded by the National Science Foundation and being led by NIU...

[vsw id=”oVtlIB-EbXg” source=”youtube” width=”425″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”] The coastline, or grounding zone, where the massive West Antarctic Ice Sheet atop land meets the Ross Sea, is considered an important piece of the puzzle for scientists working to predict the effect of climate change on rising seawaters, which threaten coastal cities worldwide. Yet researchers have never laid...

Tim Hodson, a Ph.D. candidate in geology, recently scored what has to be one of the coolest internships of the summer. In August, Hodson will spend three weeks mapping never-before-seen depths of the Atlantic Ocean while aboard the Okeanos Explorer, a former U.S. Navy ship converted into an exploration vessel. Operated by the National Oceanic...

The Illinois Junior Academy of Science (IJAS) will hold its annual state exposition Friday, May 2, and Saturday, May 3, at the NIU Convocation Center. Project displays will be open to the public from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday. Admission is free. More than 1,400 seventh- through 12th-grade students from across Illinois – some of the state’s...

Why should we care about global warming? Ninety-seven percent of all scientists conducting research on climate change have data to convince them that global warming is real and one of the foremost issues societies will need to cope with in the future. Yet debate rages about this issue in the public and political arenas while...

The government shutdown was resolved last week, but it wasn’t soon enough to save a multimillion-dollar NIU research project in the Antarctic. The National Science Foundation, which was funding the research, has notified NIU scientists and two participating graduate students that their planned Antarctic research season to begin in January has been canceled. Earlier this...

The government shutdown has put in jeopardy the upcoming field season for the U.S. Antarctic Program – a potentially major blow to dozens of research projects nationwide, including a large-scale expedition investigating ice sheet dynamics and climate change and to be led by NIU geologist Ross Powell. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is likely to cancel...

Northern Illinois University’s 28-foot-long, 2,200-pound robotic submarine, built for exploration beneath the ice shelf in the Antarctic, is getting its maiden voyage this week in one of the nation’s deepest and most celebrated bodies of water—Lake Tahoe. The unmanned yellow submarine—also known as a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) or sub-ice rover (SIR)—is equipped with a...

You can check an app on your phone to see what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, but what about 10 or even 100 years from now? To predict climate change, geologists are drilling into the heart of Antarctic ice and studying the effects of millions of years of weather. Chill out with...