Research & Academics

Feb. 12, 2019

For many Americans, having 24/7 access to fast, easy, affordable Internet connectivity is a ubiquitous part of daily life. Because Internet providers are not financially motivated to invest in the infrastructure required to provide access in remote, rural regions, however—especially for thousands of Indigenous people living on tribal lands in the United States and Canada—Internet connectivity there often is slow, unreliable, poor quality or even nonexistent.

As a result, these underserved populations are still on the wrong side… Read more

Feb. 11, 2019

The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) has named Northern Arizona University professor of practice Bertrand Cambou one of 66 academic inventors to the inaugural class of NAI senior members. NAI is a member organization comprised of U.S. and international universities as well as governmental and nonprofit research institutes, with more than 4,000 members spanning more than 250 institutions worldwide.

Cambou joined NAU’s School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems in 2015 and is the university’s most prolific… Read more

Feb. 5, 2019

Northern Arizona University lecturer Edythe Weeks’ specialty is international affairs.

And it is very, very international indeed.

Weeks, a faculty member in ethnic studies, has an unusual expertise: space law, specifically as it relates to racial equality and ensuring space development fulfills the 1967 Outer Space Treaty provision that people from all nations should benefit from space activities.

“As I look into the future, as I research newly emerging trends related to development and colonization, I see the space territory as… Read more

Jan. 31, 2019

As data centers expand to handle the exponential growth of global data traffic, the amount of energy they consume is increasing at an alarming rate. Currently, data centers use approximately 10 percent of the world’s electricity—predicted to grow to 20 percent by 2025—and in the process are becoming one of the world’s biggest sources of pollution.

A major new $3.75 million study funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is designed to… Read more