Organization profile

The Polar Engineering Development Center (PEDC), housed within NJIT’s Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research, consists of a highly-skilled group of professors, research scientists, electrical and mechanical engineers and technicians who bring decades of experience in instrument and hardware design for deployment at high latitudes and Polar regions. The group was formed in the 1980s as part of the National Science Foundation-supported Automatic Geophysical Observatory  (AGO) program, which operates to this day on projects active across the Antarctic ice shelf. Today, the PEDC is reaching out to serve the broader astrophysical and geospace scientific communities conducting research in Polar environments by providing support in the areas of sustainable “green” power generation in the 10-W to 100-W range; power conditioning and control; robust engineering for Polar climates; data acquisition techniques, units, and transmission services; and general Polar field support. As an NSF-sponsored facility, the PEDC manages instruments at South Pole Station, McMurdo  Station, Palmer Station, and across the Antarctic ice shelf