Seventeen individuals from Arctic countries including Russia, Sweden, and the United States have been selected to serve as the initial members of the Fulbright Arctic Initiative.  

The Arctic Journal writes that the group will spend the next 18 months conducting research on energy, water, health, and infrastructure.

That description might sound like standard stuff among scholarship programmes, but getting so many talented people together in the same academic room gives the Fulbright Arctic Initiative the potential for something extra, says Ross Virginia, a polar scientist at Dartmouth College and one [of] the initiative’s two co-ordinators.

“I think we will see magic happen,” Dr Virginia says. “The point of having people from such diverse backgrounds all working in the same area is to get something new out of them that they normally wouldn’t produce.”

…“This isn’t just 17 scholars working alone,” Dr Virginia says. “It’s a group of people from the Arctic drawing on each other to do work that matters for the people who live there.”