Mirella Shaban (second from right) participates in the closing panel at the 2026 Navigating the New Arctic Annual Community Meeting, Sept. 15-17 in Fairbanks, Alaska. A PhD candidate in Environmental Sciences at UVA, Mirella will be defending her dissertation on Nov. 20, 2026.
Conference Notes
By Hannah Bradley, PhD | Sep 2026
UVA team goes to Fairbanks for the Navigating the New Arctic Annual Meeting
The UVA Arctic Research Center (UVA-ARC) team had the opportunity to share our research findings with national and international colleagues at the Navigating the New Arctic Annual Community Meeting
in Fairbanks on September 15-17. We were also able to spend time with some of our Utqiaġvik collaborators who were in town for the meeting.
The grant that first brought our UVA-ARC team together was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Navigating the New Arctic program, which was launched in 2016 as one of NSF’s Ten Big Ideas. The NNA Community Office was created in 2021. Through its annual meeting and other activities, it has become a valuable resource for exchanging knowledge and ideas with Indigenous colleagues and communities and other NNA research projects working in Alaska and beyond.
The NNA Community Office has become a valuable resource for exchanging knowledge and ideas with Arctic communities and other NNA research projects.
During this year’s meeting, PI Howard Epstein organized a panel on “Resilience in Arctic Infrastructure-Environment Interactions,” which included presentations by our UVA team and researchers investigating similar topics in Kongignak, Mekoryuk, and Chevak, Alaska, as well as Arctic-wide.
UVA postdoc Valentina Ekimova presented our most recent findings showing the importance of snow management for permafrost stability. PhD candidate Mirella Shaban previewed results
from her upcoming dissertation
on micrometeorological sensing and low-cost air quality monitoring in Utqiaġvik.UVA postdoc social scientist Hannah Bradley gave a presentation on the historical context of big infrastructural changes in Utqiagvik, like the utilidor in the 1980s. Research about infrastructure must have a social infrastructure of relationships and collaborations as well! We were happy to spend time in Fairbanks with longtime friends and colleagues!