NSF awards UAF $200,000 for 2026 HAARP summer school

$199,999 NSF Award Funds Hands-On Ionosphere Training at HAARP

Students and early-career researchers in geospace physics will get mentored experiment time at HAARP under a $199,999 National Science Foundation award to the University of Alaska Fairbanks, issued July 29 for the 2026 Polar Aeronomy and Radio Science summer school. The standard grant runs from Aug. 1, 2026, through July 31, 2027.

Jessica Matthews is principal investigator. The award comes through NSF's Geosciences Workforce program, with Shikha Raizada as program officer.

The grant targets what the award abstract calls a gap in workforce development: limited hands-on training in designing and executing active ionospheric experiments. Aeronomy is the science of the upper atmosphere, the region where ionization is significant. Participants will combine virtual instruction with in-person work at the HAARP Research Facility in Gakona, developing proposal-style experiments, completing safety and operations reviews, and running them on HAARP's transmitter alongside ionosondes, magnetometers, satellite-navigation receivers, and lidar. The abstract frames that training as a way to accelerate the development of scientists able to contribute to national priorities in communications, navigation, and space weather resilience.

HAARP, a former military site now operated by UAF's Geophysical Institute, hosts the Subauroral Geophysical Observatory, created under a five-year, $9.3 million NSF grant awarded in 2021. UAF announced in July 2023 that more than 50 researchers would be in Alaska that August for the resumption of the summer school.