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University of California funds interdisciplinary, multicampus research

By Lea Ozdere

Feb. 12, 2023 11:16 p.m.

This post was updated Feb. 13 at 3:27 p.m.

The University of California has allocated $16.4 million in grants toward programs across the system focused on addressing climate change and health inequity.

The program awards, which are distributed by the UC’s Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives, are divided into two categories, said Kathleen Erwin, executive director of the Research Grants Program Office. The first of the program awards, which are planning/pilot awards, receive a maximum of $150,000 a year for two years, while awards for established programs range in monetary amounts, she said. The grants have a list of requirements the projects must follow, and the larger grants require undergraduate and graduate student involvement in the research, Erwin added.

The purpose of the funding is to support and encourage interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research involving three or more campuses, Erwin said.

“The intent is really to … spur innovative research in any discipline to achieve outcomes that any single campus or any single discipline could not achieve on its own,” she said.

The grants aim to emphasize collaborative research regarding current concerns or opportunities that are often driven by national narratives, such as climate change, said Theresa Maldonado, vice president for research and innovation in the UC Office of the President.

One of the pilot programs that received an award is the California Center for Green Buildings Research program, which involves UCLA, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara. The purpose of the project is to address and provide solutions for the multidisciplinary issue of trying to develop high-performance sustainable buildings, said Henry Burton, an associate professor of structural engineering involved with the project at UCLA.

While Burton said he primarily looks at the effects of earthquakes on infrastructure and how to design resilient and sustainable buildings, the team is full of experts from a variety of fields ranging from engineering and architecture to social science.

“We wanted to bring together a team with diverse perspectives on this issue of sustainability and diverse expertise,” he said.

As buildings are one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, the aim is to develop methods to construct buildings that reduce the impact on the environment while still being resilient to forces such as natural hazards, Burton said. For the first couple of years, their work will focus on data collection and preliminary studies and will involve graduate and undergraduate students across different campuses, he added.

“We’re trying to take an integrated approach for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings where we try to consider all these different aspects that come into designing and constructing buildings,” Burton said. “We are looking for other like-minded researchers and industry folks that could contribute to the vision.”

UC Dust is another pilot program receiving funds from the MRPI grants that addresses a consequence of climate change, said Amato Evan, an associate professor in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and the climate scientist for the project.

Evan said he studies dust storms and dust particles to understand how they affect weather, climate, agriculture, the economy and human health. He added that rates of childhood asthma are high in areas that experience dust storms.

The project will look into different aspects of dust storms such as their prevalence in California, their effects and how they might evolve, Evan said. One goal is to eventually provide policy recommendations to alleviate the negative impacts caused by dust storms, he said.

These pilot projects hope to bring together a team that can establish synergy and look for opportunities for further funding so the projects are sustainable, Burton said.

A 2019 project led by UC Berkeley on quantum science also received an MRPI grant, Erwin said, adding that the program then received a $25 million award from the National Science Foundation to establish an institute with other campuses. This expansion and opportunity positioned the UC as a national leader in this field, she said.

These grants create an interdisciplinary approach to a research question with the hope that campuses will continue to work together, Maldonado said.

“This is a unique opportunity that the University of California system offers to its faculty,” Maldonado said.

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