In my continued research of UMore Park, developing a contact list for interviews relating to various aspects of the project, I stumbled upon a great article written by a staff reporter at the MN Daily in 2010 (). This article pinpoints some key players I could really benefit from talking to more, to get a better understanding of their current state within the development of the park.
Fotis Sotiropoulos - director of the University of Minnesota's St. Anthony Falls Laboratory and principal investigator on the UMore Park project. He works along with a group of faculty from the University of Minnesota's Institute of Technology, University of Minnesota Morris, Syracuse University, and Dakota County Technical College. In 2010, he secured a two-year, $8 million grant to install a wind turbine on the UMore Park property and find ways to improve the extraction of energy from the wind. The money comes from federal stimulus funding given through the U.S. Department of Energy.
Marilyn Bruin - faculty in the College of Design. She is interested in studying best practices for multi-use community development -- communities that have commercial, residential and recreational aspects, and sees UMore Park as a great opportunity and space to integrate coursework and research for both the University's research and curriculum for students.
Charles Muscoplat - Vice President for Statewide Strategic Resource Development who has been dealing with the recent mining of gravel found on the property spanning about 200 of its 5,000 acres. More importantly, this mining will displace about 35 to 40 faculty researchers currently utilizing portions of the land and potentially delay their current research projects by moving two miles south to the area known as Vermillion Heights.
Lois Braun - researcher in the University Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics directly involved in above said relocation
Julie Bodurtha - External Relations Coordinator for UMore Park activities
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