Stanford's Woods Institute awards new round of Environmental Venture Projects

The Woods Institute for the Environment has awarded four new Environmental Venture Projects (EVP) grants for interdisciplinary research aimed at finding practical solutions promoting global sustainability. Four Stanford University faculty teams will receive a total of $791,692 over the next two years to tackle environmental challenges, from the desert grasslands of Australia to the mountain meadows of California.

Thirty-three EVP grants have been awarded since the annual program was established in 2004. This year's grantees include 13 faculty from a variety of disciplines, including marine ecology, geochemistry, biology, anthropology, astronautics and Earth sciences. Recipients were selected by an EVP faculty committee led by Woods Institute Senior Fellows Scott Fendorf and David M. Kennedy.

"The EVP program is entering a new, 'mature' phase," said Kennedy, professor emeritus of history and director of Stanford's Bill Lane Center for the American West. "Many of the earliest projects funded by the program have now come to completion, and several of those have gone on to secure continuing funding from outside agencies."

One example is a 2006 EVP seed grant to improve basic sanitation in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In 2008, the EVP researchers were awarded a three-year, National Science Foundation grant to expand the number of households participating in the study. "This is precisely the result that the EVP program hoped for--giving initial funding to innovative, high-risk interdisciplinary collaborations so that they could prove their merit and successfully receive ongoing funding from more traditional sources," Kennedy said.

On May 18, the president of Tanzania and other government officials made a special visit to the Woods Institute to hear an update on the project. In July, the EVP research team will lead a two-day symposium in Tanzania on water and health issues in that country.

EVP Symposium

To encourage campus-wide participation in the EVP program, the Woods Institute will host the first Environmental Venture Projects Symposium on Oct. 7 from 1 to 6 p.m. at the Arrillaga Alumni Center. The event will feature faculty updates on several recent EVP projects and a panel discussion on how to recruit and work successfully in interdisciplinary teams.