It was 80 degrees Monday outside Baylor University’s research park, but behind an assuming door, Baylor and U.S. military researchers were testing the limits of human brains and bodies in sub-zero conditions.
Parkas hung from a rack inside the newly unveiled Arctic Acclimatization and Sleep Optimization Research Center, or ARKTOS, within the three-story Baylor Research Innovation Collaborative off Business 77.
In the newly opened lab was a chamber that looked like a super-sized walk-in freezer, where scientists studied volunteers on the icy edge of extreme cold weather research.
“We’re able to change the oxygen in the room to simulate altitude … up to 24,000 feet and then down to -35 degrees Celsius in temperature (-31 F) to simulate those Arctic environments,” said Cory Smith, a Baylor associate professor of health and human sciences, and co-director of ARKTOS. Real-time neural activity of a Baylor ROTC student flickered in yellows and reds on a screen outside the chamber door.
“He’s probably a little nervous,” Smith said, before welcoming media and U.S. Congressman Pete Sessions, R-Waco, to see why.
Inside, the ROTC student in camo fatigues shot bursts of air at targets projected on the wall, his breathing measured with a mask, his brain monitored by an electrode-studded cap.
Other students simulated a combat medicine exercise on a dummy lying on its back. The Baylor researchers eventually hope to conduct tests lasting several days within the chamber, replacing the dummy and operating table with a bed.
“We’re building all of this out to create the next-generation warfighter monitoring system,” Smith said. That system will include wearable sensors feeding physiological and performance data back to command.
It can take weeks for the human body to acclimatize to extreme cold, so researchers are also working toward a mobile version of the chamber to accelerate the Arctic acclimatization process wherever a soldier is stationed.
The capacity of the human body to adapt to extreme cold is not well-studied, Smith said.
“When I really started to look into the research and the medicine and what we know, it’s shocking how little we do know,” he said in an interview this week on “Friday Forum with The Waco Bridge.”
“Especially because when we start going into extreme cold weather, nothing works. So all the research tools, all the medical tools, something as simple as an IV line or a monitor or a sensor that looks at oxygen levels and heart rate in the cold stops working.
“We can acclimatize to heat in just a couple of weeks very well. Cold? Months and months. So we’re trying to create ways to optimize that and reduce that time frame.”
One promising route to acclimatization is using research from spinal cord rehabilitation research to stimulate the spinal cord.
“Our pilot data is showing that what normally takes three months we’re getting in three or four weeks,” Smith said.
While the U.S. military has maintained a large footprint in Alaska and Greenland since the Cold War, Sessions said ARKTOS’ research bolsters the country’s position against “adversaries … amassing themselves, trying to gain territory.”
He referenced China and Russia and Arctic sea lanes opened up by melting ice sheets and “minerals necessary for the United States.”
President Donald Trump has threatened to annex Greenland, a territory of NATO ally Denmark, because of its strategic location and rare earth minerals.
In 2024, Sessions helped secure a $1 million in federal funding for the first phase of ARKTOS, the completed phase toured on Monday, and an additional $2 million this year for the center’s second phase.
Smith led the group into a large unfinished room dedicated to the ARKTOS Phase 2, planned for completion sometime next year. That’s where the “Arctic Motion Simulation Chamber” will live.
The gyroscoping cold chamber is intended to simulate air transport, the slope of mountainsides and maritime operations in austere environments. Baylor undergraduate and graduate researchers will have dedicated work stations as well.
Their subjects include ROTC cadets, graduate students, veterans and active military.
In a recent experiment, military personnel had to perform a series of tactical tasks, then had to act as medical providers for fellow soldiers who pretended to be wounded. Then the volunteers had to enter a cold chamber and into a bath of ice water for 30 minutes until they were borderline hypothermic.
“We had them get out, dry off, put their Arctic clothing back on and then perform those tasks again,” Smith said. “And we’re looking at how medical errors are impacted by the environmental exposure. There’s this statistic we’re trying to reduce, which is that eight of 12 preventable deaths in the field have been linked to poor tactical combat casualty care.”
Smith, a former paramedic who has studied extreme cold for years, said he expects the research to have wide practical applications.
“My passion for this is to not just do my research, but to really open this up to be a resource for the entire Department of War and industry,” Smith said.
Editor-in-Chief J.B. Smith contributed interview comments from “Friday Forum with The Waco Bridge” for this story. The show airs Friday at 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. on KWBU-FM 103.3.
