Ů�źϼ�

Did you know three Ů�źϼ�F researchers met for the first time in the Faroe Islands?

Rebecca Lawhorne, Ů�źϼ� System Office of Public Affairs
ralawhorne@alaska.edu
June 24, 2026

The Arctic Leadership Initiative is putting Ů�źϼ� researchers on the world's Arctic stage.

A glaciologist, a political scientist and an energy researcher walk into a bar. Well, it was actually a conference in Tórshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands, which from May 26-29, 2026, was the center of the Arctic governance world for the fifth biennial . 

The event brought institutional leaders, Indigenous representatives, academics, scientists, and students from around the circumpolar North and beyond to one of the world's smallest and most remote capitals, a volcanic archipelago of 54,000 people perched between Norway, Iceland and Scotland. Around 1,400 attendees from nearly 40 countries overflowed a city of about 14,000 people, the largest international conference the islands have ever hosted.

Three University of Alaska Fairbanks academics traveled over 4,000 miles to get there. None of them had met before. The University of Alaska's (Ů�źϼ�) Arctic Leadership Initiative (ALI) made it possible. A Board of Regents priority, ALI develops the next generation of Arctic leaders across the Ů�źϼ� system through student cohorts, early career faculty fellowships, Ů�źϼ� President's Arctic Professors, engagement awards and travel funding. All three were recipients of the Initiative's Ambassador Travel and Residency Award for 2026.

Pascal Buri studies glacier and snow processes in Ů�źϼ�F's . Brandon Boylan chairs Ů�źϼ�F's Department of Political Science and directs its . Magnus de Witt researches geothermal energy and energy security at the .

Three paths, one award

Boylan has been part of ALI since the beginning, serving on the internal committee that helped launch the initiative, co-designing the Arctic Leadership course for the student cohort program and receiving two Arctic Engagement Awards in its first year, in 2024. This go-around, he split his funding request between the Ů�źϼ�rctic Congress and the in Anchorage.

De Witt heard about the travel award directly from Larry Hinzman, who is the director of the Arctic Leadership Initiative and is serving as Ů�źϼ�F's interim chancellor until Colonel Russ Vander Lugt takes over as Ů�źϼ�F chancellor in September. 

The tip paid off twice. De Witt also received an ALI Engagement Award for POLARIS, short for Polar Observations of Landscapes, Assets, Risks and Infrastructure Systems, a project that maps the risks facing Arctic renewable energy infrastructure, giving communities, agencies and developers tools to plan around a landscape that is rapidly changing beneath their feet. Right before flying to the Faroe Islands, he traveled to the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge to kick off the work with international partners.

Buri learned about the opportunity through his wife, a faculty member in ALI's current cohort. It was a chance to step into a new research community on a global stage.

"Thank you to ALI for supporting somebody like me, who doesn't have decades-long research experience in the Arctic," Buri said. "They believe in bringing new topics and new people into the field. I appreciate that a lot.”

Ů�źϼ� at the table

Buri, Boylan and de Witt were part of a larger Alaska delegation at the Congress. Roughly 10 Ů�źϼ�F faculty and staff made the trip, and the University of Alaska Anchorage (Ů�źϼ�A) was also represented, including several members of the . It was Buri's first Ů�źϼ�rctic Congress, de Witt's second and Boylan's fifth.

"I was really glad to see so many people from Ů�źϼ�F at this conference," said Boylan. "We all do different things and we're all networking in our own way, but as an institution I think it's really important that we show up to these high-level Arctic conferences."

ISER Director Diane Hirshberg co-chaired a panel on Indigenous approaches to education. Ů�źϼ�A also left with approval to host the Sustainable Arctic: Futures, Education, and Research network (SAFER), a on Sustainable Arctic futures, education and research, making Ů�źϼ�A a formal hub for international Arctic collaboration."

Presentations

Each attendee brought their research. Buri shared results from a Ů�źϼ�F campus snow measurement campaign, where his team tracked mass balance and atmospheric fluxes over the winter to develop simpler ways of estimating snowmelt and sublimation, the process by which snow disappears into the atmosphere without ever melting. The work has direct applications for roads, runways, lakes and ice roads.

De Witt presented on geothermal energy as a potential driver of economic development in Alaska, as part of a session that drew presentations from across the Arctic.

Boylan covered how Western sanctions against Russia, in place since its invasion of Ukraine, have pushed Russia farther into economic and military cooperation with China and India, and how this deepening partnership is quietly redrawing the map of geopolitical influence.

One of the most memorable sessions Buri attended was on the Atlantic current system, commonly known as the Gulf Stream, and what its weakening could mean for fisheries the world depends on. De Witt sat in on a panel examining how Europe is rethinking Arctic shipping in the age of the green transition.  For Boylan, the most valuable sessions for him were the main stage roundtables where Indigenous Arctic leaders shared their work and vision for the future of their communities.

The only American Arctic university

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Ů�źϼ�rctic has paused the membership of Russian institutions, following the lead of the broader Arctic Council.

"Russia comprises half of the Arctic's territory," Boylan said. Without that collaboration, Arctic experts are left with a gap in the global system.

For Boylan, showing up at conferences like this one is about more than his own research. As more universities worldwide move into Arctic research, Ů�źϼ�'s position becomes something worth actively defending.

"We are America's Arctic University, and I don't want to see us lose that status," Boylan said.

What came home with them

Boylan connected with colleagues working on the , an effort to give young people across the Arctic an opportunity to develop a shared vision for the Arctic’s future.

De Witt is discussing a joint paper with a colleague in Iceland and exploring funding opportunities with researchers in Austria. That’s on top of the POLARIS project already underway.

Buri connected with the, a Ů�źϼ�rctic network whose founding partners are all Nordic and European institutions, with no North American representation yet. He hopes to contribute Fairbanks snow data to it.

All three plan to attend the next Ů�źϼ�rctic Congress, which Sweden will host in two years.

The in-person effect

For Boylan, the value of making that trip goes beyond any single session or connection. "Living in Fairbanks, sometimes it can feel like you're on an island. Conferences like this one are how you close that distance.” 

He comes home re-energized, with new ideas for his research, and sometimes with a new invitation to his classroom. "Meeting people is great because maybe you tap them on the shoulder and ask them to give a guest lecture for a course you're teaching."

The Covid years have taught all of us what we lose when people can't be in the same room. Buri says the importance is hard to explain to people who don't work in the field. "You could always say, instead of traveling so far, you could just read all about this on the internet. But you need to bump into people. You can't replace this human interaction."

But where did the best ideas really come from? Fellow conference-goers know that some of the best conversations happen away from the sessions. 

"At all these conferences, I usually end up next to the conference program just having a beer with colleagues," de Witt said. "Over a beer, with a casual discussion, you usually get the best ideas and inspiration for new projects."

A Zoom call, he said, doesn't work the same way. "You're really focused, you're just doing some work, and you don't have the casual chit-chat. [In person] you discuss something completely different, not related to your work at all, and you get a good idea. That's something we can't do remotely."

Go deeper

• Arctic Leadership Initiative