Duke University
AC-9: Academic Research

See attached.

To update our inventory of faculty and staff who engage in sustainability research, we used the following process: We began with Duke's October 2013 STARS submission. In that submission, we identified faculty who conduct sustainability research using multiple methods: 1. The Office of Research Support's Sponsored Projects Systems Database, searching by key word for sustainability related research. This search focused on grants funded for environmentally-focused sustainability research using keywords in the title or body of the text (climat*, sustainabl*, conservation, energy, water, environment*, ecosystem, renewable, fisheries, habitat, carbon dioxide, CO2, methane, greenhouse, waste, transportation, fuel -- with * as a character wild card). 2. Faculty listings in the Nicholas School of the Environment. 3. The Duke Campus Farm's website. 4. Faculty listings on departmental websites, including but not limited to Chemistry, Duke Global Health Institute, Economics, Law School, Sanford School of Public Policy, Sociology, Women's Studies To update the inventory, we cleaned the previous database (removed duplicates and faculty we identified may not meet our sustainability criteria or who no longer work at Duke). Next we added to the inventory: We reviewed all research projects with awards received between July 1, 2012 and August 2014 (at https://ors.duke.edu/awards) and included the principal investigators of projects that, according to a trained reviewer, met environmental, economic, or social sustainability criteria. We also added staff, including non-regular track faculty (who were excluded in the previous submission), laboratory managers, associates in research, etc., who conduct sustainability research from the departments identified in the inventory.

A Bass Connections Project is working to understand global health in the Peruvian Amazon http://research.duke.edu/video/25883 Cathrine Hoyo is researching Environmental Influences on Health, Before Birth http://research.duke.edu/stories/duke-team-looks-environmental-influences-health-starting-birth Researchers Lauren Nichols and Jacqueline Mohan from the Nicholas School for the Environment are studying how todays forest trees will adjust to global climate changes http://research.duke.edu/stories/trees-global-warming Elizabeth A. Albright, from the Nicholas School for the Environment, is researching how policies and decisions are made in response to extreme climatic events. Further, she is interested in collaborative decision making processes, particularly in the realm of water resource management. Erika Weinthal studies war's effects on water, and the use of the vital resource to build peace. One of Weinthal's current areas of research, conducted in cooperation with the United Nations Environmental Programme and the Environmental Law Institute, seeks to understand war’s impact on water resources and to determine how water management can serve as a platform for political reconciliation, the fostering of regional cooperation, and the building of trust and confidence among previously warring parties.

To estimate total faculty and staff engaged in research, we * included 1750 tenure-track faculty in Duke's 8 major schools that conduct research * estimated that 50% of the non-tenure-track faculty (total: 1648) conduct research * estimated that 25% of the School of Medicine and School of Nursing staff (total: 11,091) are involved in research * estimated that 5% of the staff on the remainder of campus (total: 8,280) are involved in research Postdoctoral associates and graduate students are excluded in these estimates. Duke's past submissions excluded faculty in the Schools of Medicine and Nursing and did not include staff.