Seed Grant Recipients
2023 Awardees
Congratulations to the recipients of the 2023 Climate Change Initiative Awards!
See below for an overview of their projects.
Four awards fund activities–workshops, discussions, and other events–to promote new, cross-NYU partnerships to tackle important interdisciplinary issues related to climate change:
This Incubator will create a platform for climate change-focused art and will enrich NYU student and cultural life through themed events, artist talks, workshops, and a student art show. The project also aims to positively influence students' mental health.
Faculty Investigators
- Eric Dickson (FAS Politics)
- Gresche Würfel (Tisch)
Through a workshop following the "Climate Action and Health" conference at the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute this fall, the team will foster cross-campus collaborations for interdisciplinary, collaborative climate action research and policy initiatives.
Faculty Investigators
- Kevin Cromar (Marron Institute)
- George Thurston (Grossman School of Medicine)
The Rudin Center at Wagner and C2SMART at Tandon will host a discussion on the intersection of transportation infrastructure and climate technology solutions and address challenges and opportunities for climate change impacts on transportation.
Faculty Investigators
- Sarah Kaufman (Wagner)
- Kaan Ozbay (Tandon)
This team will convene political science, sociology, economics, history, and cultural criticism experts to explore energy policies, historical energy shifts, political coalitions, and cultural contexts to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.
Faculty Investigators
- Stephen Gross (FAS History)
- Andrezej Ancygler (NYU Berlin)
- Carolyn Kissane (SPS)
- Maya Vinokour (FAS Russian & Slavic Studies)
Six additional awards support novel research inquiries and facilitate the preparation of successful external grant applications:
In response to a request from the United Nations World Food Programme, this project will analyze the distribution of, and challenges related to, Special Nutritious Foods (SNF) in Chad and South Sudan to identify bottlenecks and other supply chain issues, and propose cost-effective strategies to improve delivery of food in vulnerable regions.
Faculty Investigators
- Chris Dickey (GPH)
- Moaz Abdelwadoud (GPH)
This Initiative seeks to inform a just and equitable transition to a green economy by raising awareness of the direct experiences of workers and communities in Appalachia, including coal workers, their families, labor activists, workforce retraining experts, and clean energy visionaries.
Faculty Investigators
- Jodie Kirschner (Marron Institute)
- Angela Hawken (Marron Institute)
This project aims to design a novel microfluidics system to understand how plants sense and respond to environmental stressors that mimic climate change. This will increase our understanding of plant adaptation and resilience, and may lead to improved crop survival in the face of extreme, unpredictable weather.
Faculty Investigators
- Kenneth Birnbaum (FAS Biology)
- Alyaa Hessin (Abu Dhabi)
- Yong Rafael Song (Abu Dhabi)
- Ajymurat Orozaliev (Abu Dhabi)
This project will examine biases in peer-reviewed climate change research to assess how climate change impacts in developing and vulnerable regions are (or are not) portrayed. The goal is to increase the representation of research on regions that disproportionately experience the impacts of climate change.
Faculty Investigators
- Sonali McDermid (FAS Environmental Studies)
- Bart Bonikowski (FAS Sociology, Politics)
This Project will create digital narratives of women on the frontlines of climate adaptation and response in Bangladesh, India, and the Philippines. The researchers aim to capture valuable knowledge from those whose voices are often excluded from climate policymaking.
Faculty Investigators
- Raul Perez Lejano (Steinhardt)
- Debra Laefer (Tandon)
- Shondel Nero (Steinhardt)
- Carlos Restrepo (Wagner)
This project will study the adoption of a novel household rainwater harvesting and storage system that improves access to reliable and safe water, and can thereby improve health outcomes. The work will occur in Pakistan, where climate change is exacerbating flooding during monsoon seasons and water deficits the rest of the year.
Faculty Investigators
- Samreen Malik (Abu Dhabi)
- David Blakeslee (Abu Dhabi)
- Uzma Afzal (Abu Dhabi)