Virginia Tech will expand its global reach for the first time with a future purchase of land in Canada for research on space weather events and their effects on the Earth.
A resolution to purchase more than 100 acres of land in Kapuskasing, Ontario, was approved by the university board of visitors at a meeting earlier this month.
The university will buy the land, along with two antenna arrays and an equipment shelter, for about $83,000 — or $115,000 in Canadian currency — according to appraisal value from December 2024 that was part of board documents.
The acquisition will continue the electrical and computer engineering department’s participation in the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network, or “SuperDARN,” a sophisticated and playfully named system that collects data from the layer of the atmosphere between Earth and space.
“What we’re looking at here is the fact that Earth’s space environment is variable,” said professor and chief researcher J. Mike Ruohoniemi. “Our interest is partly the applications, but has been primarily in understanding the physics of space weather.”
The acquisition would be the first property the university owns outside of the U.S., according to Mark Owczarski, the school’s chief spokesperson. This does not include the study abroad center in Switzerland as it is owned by the Virginia Tech Foundation, a separate corporation that manages the university’s real estate portfolio and endowment.
The first SuperDARN-type radar was constructed in Labrador, Canada, in 1983 by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, or JHU/APL, where Ruohoniemi was a faculty member before he and the APL SuperDARN team moved to Virginia Tech in 2008 to continue their work and increase the exposure of U.S.-based students to the project.
“Quite a number of talented students have progressed through our research program,” said Ruohoniemi, “and now we are seeing them go on to found their own research groups with faculty positions at other universities.”
The SuperDARN project is funded by the National Science Foundation and has embraced collaboration from institutions such as Penn State University and Dartmouth College. Several countries contribute as well by providing a home for strategically placed radar antennas that study the magnetized region surrounding the planet, gaining a greater insight into global warming, solar winds and radiation from the sun, among other events.
“In fact, the whole SuperDARN project, the U.S. in particular, was just reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences decade of surveys and we were rated in the highest category of facility value,” said Ruohoniemi.
Virginia Tech will execute the purchase at a cost not to exceed the appraised value conversion calculated on the day of closing — a date that has yet to be announced, according to Owczarski.
