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For more than 50 years, what today is known as the Institute for Scientific Research has quietly gone about its business of helping a range of government and academic institutions better understand the space “between the surface of the earth and the center of the sun,” says ISR Director Patricia Doherty.
With a 60-person staff featuring some of the leading researchers in their fields, the institute focuses on events in space – like solar flares, geomagnetic storms and hurricane-like outbursts on the surface of the sun – and their impact on the technologies earth-bound humans rely upon on to forecast weather, navigate, and communicate, among other tasks. But for most of its existence, the institute has been largely invisible to the rest of BC — until now.
This semester, nearly 40 ISR staffers are relocating from offices and labs at a downsizing Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford to new workspace in Kenny Cottle Library on the Newton Campus. In addition, ISR experts are teaching courses and offering some of BC’s most accomplished undergraduate scientists unique opportunities to conduct research at the institute, said Doherty.
“For the first time in the history of ISR, we’ll actually all be together,” said Doherty, who works at the ISR offices in St. Clement’s Hall. “That’s exciting, and we thank [Provost and Dean of Faculties Cutberto Garza] for the opportunity to be together by renovating space at Kenny Cottle Library.”
Bringing ISR staff to Newton Campus will give the institute a chance to “open our doors to the University community,” said Doherty, adding that ISR was originally formed to administer a large research grant and, unlike other types of centers and institutes, never integrated into BC’s undergraduate programming.
“With our move to the Newton Campus,” she said, “one of our goals is to increase our presence in the academic community so more students can be involved in our work and to enable more interaction with faculty.”
One of the most prolific grant-winning units on campus, the institute brings in between $5 million and $7 million each year, receiving contracts to conduct research into the evolution of ionospheric structures, which Doherty describes as the space environment that starts at about 200 kilometers and extends out to interstellar space. Conditions in this region are crucial to the world’s fleet of satellites and the technology they support, such as global positioning systems and air traffic navigation.
ISR funders have included the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Office for Naval Research, the Naval Research Laboratory, NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Science Foundation, as well as private industry. In 1954, a BC math professor, Rene Marcou, formed the Ionospheric Research Laboratory to support a $5,000 grant to map the ionosphere and define its effect on radio waves, work that continues to this day, says Doherty. In the 1960s and 70s, the unit was called the Space Data Analysis Laboratory; in the late 1980s it was the Institute for Space Research, before giving way to the ISR label in the 1990s.
The institute’s current research initiatives stretch across the globe, including senior physicist Cesar Valladares’ project to design and deploy a network of ground-based scientific sensors across South America that provide measurements of the low-latitude upper atmospheric regions where many of the key physics questions of the ionosphere remain unsolved.
In addition, Doherty and ISR team members Endawoke Yizengaw Kassie and Charles Carrano are working closely with several African universities to create a similar network on that continent and to provide training in the use of satellite navigation for scientific exploration and for practical applications with societal benefits such as navigation, precision farming, mapping and surveying, and emergency location services.
ISR researchers hold leadership positions with some of the top scientific organizations in the world, including the Institute of Navigation, where Doherty serves as vice president, the International Union of Radio Scientists, the International Astronomical Union —where ISR senior scientist Dave Webb served as president for three years — and the American Geophysical Union, where senior physicist Sunanda Basu sits on the board of directors. Several ISR staff members are also recipients of prestigious awards from Air Force sponsors, including senior physicists Frank Marcos, Bill Burke and Santimay Basu.
ISR scientists have published more than 50 papers a year in peer reviewed scientific journals.
As ISR expands it role on campus, some of these experts will be interacting more with students, particularly in the classroom. For the past two years, Research Astronomer Tom Kuchar has taught an astronomy class to students in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. There are also pending proposals for an undergraduate course on space weather and for a graduate level space physics course, Doherty says.
Earth and Environmental Sciences Department Chair Associate Professor Gail Kineke said there is a natural fit between the expertise of the scientists at ISR and her department. She looks forward to added course offerings and joint research projects.
“We’ve been interacting with Pat and scientists at ISR in a few ways over the last couple of years, and we look forward to building on those interactions,” said Kineke. “We share interests scientifically in the broad areas of the geosciences and the research and expertise of the scientists at ISR is a good complement to some of the activities in the department.”
This year, ISR launched the Marconi Scholarship Program, named after the pioneering radio wave researcher. Two undergraduates are currently conducting research through the program and two additional students are expected to join in the work.
“We welcome the opportunity to connect with students and our colleagues on the faculty,” says Doherty, “and we now have the chance to open the institute up more and make those connections.”
Vice Provost for Undergraduate Affairs Donald Hafner, who has been working closely with Doherty, said the university is always looking to build links between undergraduates with world-class researchers.
"The imagination and energy that Pat Doherty and her colleagues have applied in folding undergraduates into the ISR projects is a fine example of how a research university can affirm the central importance of its undergraduate program and the connection of research to undergraduate instruction,” said Hafner. “ISR offers a good model of ways that other research institutes might draw undergraduates into their activities."