UND duo part of delegation of North Dakota Leaders headed to Norway to talk energy issues

A delegation of North Dakotans including, UND's own Michael F. Moore, associate vice president of research for intellectual property commercialization & economic development, and Melissa Gjellstad, director of the Norwegian Program, leave for Norway today to learn about Norway's energy system.

The delegation, comprising top state and local officials, legislators, education, business and non-profit leaders, will lay the groundwork for cooperation on fossil and renewable energy development, technology demonstration and investment to help foster new energy opportunities between the energy-rich country and North Dakota.

They will be hosted by the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, private companies Statoil and Borregaard, and a number of academic, research and nongovernmental organizations.  The Great Plains Institute (GPI), along with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), is organizing the delegation.

"As one of the world's premier energy players and as one of the fastest-growing energy producers among U.S. states, Norway and North Dakota, respectively, have important strategic interests around which to deepen what is already a significant bilateral relationship," said GPI Consultant and delegation coordinator Patrice Lahlum, noting Norway and North Dakota's shared ethnic heritage and rich tradition of cultural exchange.

Lahlum says that Norway's experience with oil and gas development has great potential value to North Dakota, from policy and technology best practices to its internationally recognized success in responsible, long-term management of national wealth generated from oil and gas revenue.

"North Dakota voters recently took the step of establishing a long-term Legacy Fund.  With this mechanism in place, the state has an opportunity to learn from the institutional framework, investment policies and strategies that have made Norway a global model of financial management and governance," Lahlum said.

Norway is a leader in developing and deploying technologies for oil and gas development both at home and abroad, as well as for managing the environmental and other impacts of fossil energy production.

Norway ranks as the world's second largest sovereign investor through its global Government Pension Fund, which manages over US$600 billion on behalf of the Norwegian people.  Statoil, Norway's national oil company, which counts the state as its largest shareholder, recently made a US$ 4.4 billion investment in Brigham Resources and its operations in North Dakota's vast Bakken oil formation.

The delegation will return to North Dakota on June 9.

Melissa Gjellstad:

Melissa Gjellstad, an assistant professor in the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department and Norwegian Program director, has been a faculty member since 2008. She's also a Graduate School and Gender and Women Studies Program affiliate. Her strong advocacy for Norway's storied culture, the land and its people has resulted in an expansion of the Norwegian Program at UND in her short tenure here.  She has created a thriving program, designing many of the language, literature and culture courses from scratch.

Since taking over the program, the number of students majoring and minoring has doubled. Students studying abroad also have increased.

Gjellstad, a native of Velva, N.D., took her first Norwegian class to fulfill an undergraduate language requirement and following a study-abroad program in Norway at the University of Oslo, her passion was ignited. With curiosity now fueling her interest, she completed a Ph.D. in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures at the University of Washington in 2004 after finishing her master's there and her bachelor's at Concordia College in Moorhead.

Gjellstad has been recognized for many achievements throughout her professional career; her most recent include: Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award (2011), Summer First-Year Experience (FYE) Pilot Development Project Award (2011), and the Faculty Star Award (2009). She also received several notable fellowships, some of which include the American Scandinavian Foundation Fellowship to research at the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research at the University of Oslo in Norway (2006), and the Fulbright Fellowship to research at the University of Bergen also in Norway (2002-2003).

Her expertise is in contemporary Scandinavian literature, primarily Norwegian, and the literary representation of motherhood and fatherhood in those texts. Her research focus is on feminist and masculinity theory inform, among other topics. Prior to her arrival at UND, Gjellstad completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Agder in Kristiansand, Norway, where she worked with a team on a project titled "Different Families; an Investigation of Family Understandings in Legal Texts and Literature." Gjellstad has published on several contemporary Norwegian authors.

Gjellstad has earned an international reputation for innovative teaching approaches and research. Last year, she was elected to the advisory board of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, promoting Scandinavian languages, literature, history, culture and society in North America. Gjellstad also launched online beginning Norwegian language classes at UND, the only courses for university credit in this language currently offered online.

Recently, Gjellstad has been instrumental in her planning and coordination of a national traveling exhibit titled "Cold Recall: Reflections of a Polar Explorer," which currently is staged at the UND Chester Fritz Library. The exhibit examines one of the greatest adventures of the early 20th century: the race to the South Pole.

As part of the "Cold Recall" exhibit, Gjellstad worked with others on campus to attract Ann Bancroft, modern-day polar explorer and educator, to UND for a Great Conversation event, which Gjellstad moderated on April 12.

Michael F. Moore

Michael F. Moore is head of UND's Office of Intellectual Property Commercialization and Economic Development (IPCED), which is responsible for protection and commercialization of University research innovations, including aerospace sciences, computer sciences, medicine and health sciences, engineering and physical sciences.

The office is also responsible for drafting and negotiating all of UND's legal intellectual property agreements, such as confidentiality, material transfer, and licensing agreements.

For Moore, there's also a significant human side — what he considers the vital part of creating an atmosphere of creativity and entrepreneurship among researchers, scholars, and artists on campus.

Moore received an M.S. degree in biotechnology from the Illinois Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science in biology with a minor in chemistry from Northern Illinois University. Before coming here, he was the manager of strategic accounts and compliance at the University of Minnesota; he also did significant licensing deals for Minnesota's life science technologies. Moore is a past vice president for the Central Region of Association of University Technology Managers and is active in the Licensing Executives Society.

Moore spent 12 years at Amersham Life Science and held positions in radio-pharmaceutical manufacturing and method development, product applications, new technology assessment, and product management (marketing). At the time he left Amersham, one of the core technologies that he helped develop — enhanced chemiluminescence, or ECL™ — had become a staple in the area of DNA and protein detection. So he earned his intellectual property stripes in the field, actually doing IP development.

Moore, a native of Harvard, Ill., and his wife, Lisa, have two children: Bobby, 21, a student at the University

Contact:

Patrice Lahlum, Consultant, Great Plains Institute, West Fargo, N.D., 701.281.5007, plahlum@gpisd.net