Since its launch in 2007, the Grand Challenges Program has been addressing global environmental issues through interdisciplinary approaches, while providing research and learning opportunities for undergraduate students.
The program is managed by the Princeton Environmental Institute, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Wilson School and many other departments participate in the programs, Dean of SEAS Vincent Poor GS ’77 noted.
The initiative features three platforms: Climate and Energy Challenge, Development Challenge and Health Challenge. The Climate and Energy Challenge focuses on climate change, non-fossil energy sourcesand other environmental detriments on the energy system. The Development Challenge focuses on alleviating the issue of poverty in Africa while attempting to conserve the continent’s biodiversity and supply of natural resources. The Health Challenge focuses on developing methods for the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other global infectious diseases.
Funding for research is provided primarily by gifts from the University directed to Grand Challenges as well as programmatic funds that the various units have.
Dean of the Wilson School Cecilia Rouse noted that the strength of the University in approaching questions such as health arises from its practice of multidisciplinary thinking.
“Grand Challenges combines Princeton’s strength in the natural sciences and the social sciences to try to address important issues,” she said.
Poor explained that Grand Challenges is unique in that it was conceived as a program that would be cross-disciplinary, and very heavily oriented towards undergraduate student participation.
“Vertically, Grand Challenges goes from freshmen to postdocs, and horizontally, it goes across all the disciplines,” Poor noted. “It’s not only a research program; although that’s important, Grand Challenges is also designed to have a strong educational component.”
Robert Socolow, professor emeritus of mechanical and aerospace engineering who used to run the Climate and Energy Challenge from the inception of Grand Challenges, said that online casino a significant part of Grand Challenges is the involvement of undergraduate students through internships through which about 100 students are funded over the summer to participate in ongoing research.
Socolow explained that, as director of the Climate and Energy Challenge, his job was to stimulate initiatives on the part of the faculty that combined the undergraduate experience with research enhancing their research involvement with the themes of climate and energy.
He explained he put in a lot of effort to promote new undergraduate courses and stimulate faculty members to take on projects that would involve students.
Socolow explained that he identified faculty members who made proposals to make a new course or to enhance a course and would find a way to mentor undergraduate students.
“The mission doesn’t stop,” he said.“Bringing undergraduates into research is always important. The field of climate and energy is evolving so we also want to keep the curriculum fresh, so that job just continues.”
He explained that the world will benefit primarily by the things students do over their careers and lifetimes, stimulated and enabled by the curriculum and research opportunities.
“Sustainability is going to get bigger and bigger. We are very active creatures on a small planet, climate will continue to change,” he added.
Elie Bou-Zeid, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering who participated in the Climate and Energy Challenge, said that undergraduate students participated in his research by looking at the data the team produced and using them for course projects. He said the support of Grand Challenges was “really instrumental in getting us to start on projects that otherwise would have been difficult to get.”
Bou-Zeid conducted research on optimizing the performance of turbines through changing their configurations and on modeling polar and nighttime atmospheric boundary layers.
CEE assistant professor Kelly Caylor participated in the Development Challenge by researching how climate variability affects ecosystems in the context of human livelihood in central Kenya. Caylor explained that undergraduate students are a big part of his research group, as a lot of funding that goes toward Grand Challenges is directed to these undergraduate research initiatives. He noted that there are many opportunities for undergraduates to get involved and develop their own projects in his fieldworks and lab works.
Ecology and evolutionary biology professor Andrew Dobson, who participated in the Health Challenge of Grand Challenges, explained that he had worked with both undergraduate students and graduate students in pursuing his research.
He said that through Grand Challenges, many seniors have completed their theses on research associated with Chagas disease, which is an important but largely neglected tropical disease in south and central America that he studies.
Dobson said that he hopes in about ten years’ time, the research that is being completed by the Health Challenge will make a “huge difference.”
“Efforts in tackling issues in energy and climate have grown enormously in the period of time that Grand Challenges have been in effect, so the momentum from that is going to affect the future,” Poor said.“It’s been a catalyst for getting research going, and it’ll definitely continue to be that way.”
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