By Kathryn Royster
March 1, 2022
The USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies (WIES) is launching three new research centers to support original, solutions-focused work on the world’s most pressing environmental and sustainability challenges.
“The Wrigley Institute Research Centers mark a bold and important step in our journey to becoming one of the nation’s premier environmental and sustainability programs,” says Wrigley Institute Director and USC psychology professor Joe Árvai. “We have a long tradition of serving as a launchpad for diverse faculty-led projects, and this new arrangement adds resources to support institute-led research from across a wider array of disciplines.”
Each of WIES’s three new research centers will focus on a specific theme: Earth and Environmental Systems, Applied Environmental Solutions, and Social Transformation. The three centers will merge the interdisciplinary expertise of the Wrigley Institute’s affiliated faculty, full-time senior scientists, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students to better understand and help to solve environmental and sustainability challenges. Going forward, WIES’s Faculty Innovation Awards will expand in size and will seed projects to be completed within the new centers.
The Center for Earth and Environmental Systems, which focuses on the physical sciences and develops scientific insights into the changing planet, monitors the natural system that make up our environment and offers insight into its functioning. The center draws on the most recent research in marine biology, microbiology and geology to help us understand the environmental changes that could threaten our future. The Wrigley Institute’s San Pedro Ocean Time-series program, which measures the health of the urban ocean adjacent to Los Angeles, falls under this umbrella, as will new research and monitoring initiatives on land and at sea.
The Center for Applied Environmental Solutions focuses on the many and growing environmental problems facing the world. It serves as WIES’s research and development hub, with a focus on turning science into action by testing the feasibility of new ideas and determining how to convert them into workable practices and technology. The institute’s kelp-to-biofuel project, which has garnered international attention, is one of the current cornerstones of this center. Applied Environmental Solutions supports Megan Fieser’s research in chemical methods for recycling plastics, such as PVC, through her Gabilan Assistant Professor.
WIES’s Center for Social Transformation is expanding its reach to include the humanities, social sciences, and arts. “Problems of sustainability and the environment touch on every aspect of our lives. They’re also becoming more urgent by the day, so it’s important that we address them from as many angles as possible,” says Wrigley Institute Associate Director for Research and Engagement Jessica Dutton. This center develops projects that examine how people think, feel, and act in relation to sustainability. The center’s goal is to generate insights that will help influence policy and people’s decisions to protect and heal our planet. Initiatives in this center include Professor of History William Deverell’s “The West on Fire” project, which is looking at the social causes of wildfire and better ways to prevent it and live with it, and Árvai’s Judgment and Decision-Making Lab, which studies how people think and behave when confronted with a wide range of environmental risks and opportunities.
The Wrigley Institute invites applications for the next two years of Research Center projects. Six Faculty Innovation Awards will fund each project with up to $50,000 each. WIES will accept proposals from all USC departments and schools. Interested faculty should download the RFP for more information and apply through the Wrigley Institute’s Faculty Innovation Awards portal. Proposals must be submitted by March 31, 2022.
