Purdue University
ER-18: Sustainability Research Incentives

Undergraduate: The Discovery Park Undergraduate Research Internship (DURI) program involves Purdue undergraduates in the interdisciplinary research environment of Purdue’s Discovery Park, including the Global Sustainability Institute (which includes the Center for the Environment (C4E), the Center for Global Food Security (CGFS), the Purdue Climate Change Research Center (PCCRC), the Purdue Water Community (PWC) and the Energy Center (EC). The program provides opportunities for students to work on cutting edge research projects that involve combining two or more disciplinary strengths. Numerous other programs support student research applied to specific sustainability issues or themes, for example the Global Engineering Program has had several projects tied to sustainability challenges (see for example http://www.purdue.edu/differencemakers/cameroon.html) and the Hydrologists Helping Others (H2O) program supports students in applied research addressing hydrological challenges in areas of need. Graduate: Purdue’s Ecological Sciences & Engineering Interdisciplinary Graduate Program (ESE-IGP) provides students with educational and research experiences that integrate engineering and science concepts to solve major environmental problems using an ecological approach. Here, we define "science" as observation/monitoring of systems and elucidation of processes/phenomena at appropriate scales, while "engineering" is defined as the design of a system--based on scientific understanding--which mitigates a problem of interest. This program serves as a catalyst to promote collaborative inter-disciplinary sustainability research involving graduate students in multiple departments and affiliated Purdue University faculty members

Purdue University has a focused effort to encourage faculty research in sustainability through the Global Sustainability Institute, which includes five focused research centers (the Center for the Environment (C4E), the Center for Global Food Security (CGFS), the Purdue Climate Change Research Center (PCCRC), the Purdue Water Community (PWC) and the Energy Center (EC)) as well as several cross-cutting initiatives, including the U.S.-China Ecopartnership for Environmental Sustainability. This Institute actively engages several hundred faculty from all colleges at Purdue in sustainability research, and provides faculty with staff support, meeting spaces, funding for workshops and lectures, and some seed funding to develop new research ideas. External funding for research performed through the institute comes from major federal agencies including the NSF, EPA, and DoE. The Global Sustainability Institute is a major component of Purdue’s Discovery Park, which is a dedicated $600 million research and learning complex of 8 core centers, where faculty and students are using an interdisciplinary approach to tackle the grand challenges of today. Discovery Park includes a strong emphasis on entrepreneurship and moving our discoveries to delivery of impacts, ranging from new products and services, to new policies and regulations.

Additional website for information about the student research program: http://www.gradschool.purdue.edu/ese/ Additional website for information about the faculty research program: http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/