From storm-chasing drones to fire-tracking satellites, Grand Challenge projects are boosting our understanding of an evolving planet
Brian Argrow
Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and Director, Integrated Remote and In-Situ Sensing (IRISS)
Jennifer Balch
Assistant听Professor of Geography and Director, Earth Lab
Throughout this spring鈥檚 severe storm season, scientists from CU 麻豆影院 and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) caravanned across the plains of Colorado, Oklahoma and Kansas in search of brewing tornadoes. Once they spotted a churning supercell, they pulled over and launched a small yellow aircraft named TTwistor straight at it, enabling the state-of-the-art drone to gather data from places piloted aircraft can鈥檛 safely fly.
Researchers hope this data will lead to longer warning times and prevent some of the $5 billion in damage and 80 deaths tornadoes cause nationwide annually. 鈥淚n order to understand these storms, you have to take measurements from inside them,鈥� explains Eric Frew, associate director of technology for Integrated Remote and In-situ Sensing (IRISS) at CU 麻豆影院. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the type of capability we are providing scientists.鈥�
Project Storm is just one of dozens of collaborative, tech-driven projects to grow out of CU 麻豆影院鈥檚 Launched in September 2015, the endeavor was inspired by a speech from President Barack Obama, which called on companies, philanthropists and universities to leverage their human and financial assets for the common good.
鈥淐U was among the first to take up that call,鈥� says Emily CoBabe- Ammann, director of strategic projects for the Research and Innovation Office.
Acknowledging its strengths in earth, space and social sciences, the university pledged $4.5 million annually to a few select projects that promised to be catalysts for big-impact discoveries that benefit both planet and people.
The first large beneficiaries were IRISS and Earth Lab. Smaller grants funded a new space minor and Center for the Study of Origins this year.听
Project STORM team flies the IRISS TTwistor UAS toward a supercell with a tornado on the ground.
IRISS, which helps design, develop and deploy novel sensing systems like drones and ground-based light detection and ranging (LiDAR), has since spawned seven projects. Among them: Project MAP, in which anthropologists use LiDAR to map ancient archaeological sites; Project Forest, which uses drones to study forest health; and Project Drought, which couples large-scale satellite observations with detailed soil moisture measurements from low-flying drones to improve drought prediction.
鈥淥ur Grand Challenge is about better understanding the dynamics of the earth and how it evolves,鈥� Frew says. 鈥淚RISS provides fourdimensional sensing tools鈥�3D plus time鈥攖hat enable that.鈥�
Another key pillar of听the Grand Challenge is , the only data synthesis center of its kind in the nation.
鈥淭his is an amazing moment in the history of science. We potentially have the ability to answer so many questions we couldn鈥檛 answer before,鈥� says Earth Lab founder Jennifer Balch. 鈥淏ut we have to break down the barriers to dealing with big data and teach researchers how to better access it.鈥�
Earth Lab has grown to 30 people and developed several software tools that have been downloaded by earth scientists around the world. It has also partnered with satellite imagery specialist DigitalGlobe to better understand how and where wildfires occur (84 percent are human caused), and with Newmont Mining to develop ways to use aerial imagery to better identify minerals on the ground. It works closely with IRISS, helping crunch the data gathered from its sensing devices.
In July, Earth Lab became part of CU 麻豆影院鈥檚 Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), a longstanding leader in earth system research.
In August 2018, Earth Lab plans to roll out one of the first professional certificates in the nation to integrate data science and earth systems knowledge.
鈥淲e want to create a generation of students who can deal with big data and also understand what questions they should be asking about the future of our planet,鈥� Balch says.
IRISS and Earth Lab are slowly becoming more self-sufficient, freeing up money to support the next wave of projects. Three were announced this summer.
Long term, CoBabe-Ammann hopes the capital investments made and relationships forged via Grand Challenge will be an engine for lasting campuswide change.
鈥淔or decades to come, we will be able to address societal challenges having to do with earth and space science in a way we couldn鈥檛 before.鈥�
The cross-campus Grand Challenge continues to extend its impact, on and off campus, through investments in new projects like Space Weather, CubeSats (miniaturized satellites), and the Nature, Environment, Science & Technology (NEST) Studio for the Arts.
Waleed Abdalati