IU researcher awarded $1M to study extreme weather effects
Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
An Indiana University associate professor has been awarded a nearly $1 million Defense Department grant to install an environmental chamber capable of reaching minus 40 degrees Celsius so that he can study how extreme weather affects humans.
Associate professor Blair Johnson received the $945,000 grant to build one of the coldest environmental chambers in the country, according to a Jan. 31 news release from IU. An engineering firm is in the process of being hired to design and construct the chamber on the Bloomington campus by the end of September.
“The U.S. Department of Defense is very interested in cold and how it affects the physiology of humans as well as how various equipment and materials work in those temperatures,” Johnson, a researcher in the school’s department of kinesiology, said in the news release. “Climate change is opening up new trade routes in the Arctic as well as access to natural resources, so the DoD needs to have a presence in that area where it gets extremely cold.”
Johnson and associate professor Zachary Schlader will seek to better understand the factors that contribute to frostbite and cold weather injuries.
The school’s current environmental chamber only reaches temperatures of 4 degrees Celsius. In the Arctic, temperatures drop as low as minus 40 to minus 60 degrees Celsius, the news release said.
The new chamber will have two sections: one for extreme cold and one for extreme heat. Each will be about 25 feet by 25 feet and 14 feet high.
“The other side will be able to reach 50 degrees Celsius, so it can get very hot as well — although there are other chambers in the U.S. that can reach that level,” Johnson said. “The cold side will be groundbreaking in not just temperature capabilities but the size.”
Johnson said in the news release that their first project will be to determine who might be more susceptible to cold injuries and how to prevent them. By identifying characteristics that put people at higher risk, the Defense Department can head off any potential problems by not putting those people in such environments.
The grant award is managed by the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Command Army Research Laboratory, the news release said.