This year’s proposals offered research-driven solutions to global challenges through an impressive variety of technologies, partnerships, and practices. From ancient agriculture to cutting-edge AI, the funded proposals were selected from the most competitive applicant pool in the program’s history.
Now in its fourth year, the Planetary Solutions Grant Program will distribute $2 million to 23 projects aspiring to change the way we use energy, address climate-related health impacts, support farmers, improve data collection, and much more.
In response to feedback, the YPS Grant Program was re-envisioned to better support the campus community and to more effectively turn knowledge into action and positive impact beyond campus. The solicitation invited proposals for three types of grants:
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Initiation Grants (up to $25,000): Intended to spark new ideas
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Acceleration Grants (up to $100,000): Intended to lay the groundwork for implementation
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Constellation Grants (up to $250,000): Intended to transform knowledge into action
From a record 102 submitted proposals, five Initiation Grants, seventeen Acceleration Grants, and one Constellation Grant were selected for funding by faculty-led review committees. Project teams include representatives from across the University, including nine departments and eight professional schools. The first-ever Constellation Grant – the largest grant in the program’s history – will be awarded to Lea Winter, Assistant Professor of Chemical & Environmental Engineering, and her team for a project to develop the first low-temperature, electrified, modular approach to destroying hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants – potent greenhouse gases that are often inadvertently released.
The YPS Grant Program is funded by the Three Cairns Climate Impact Innovation Fund which serves as a catalyst to encourage Yale faculty and the wider Yale community to focus their research, scholarship, and expertise on climate solutions. By providing early-stage support for innovative projects, the fund enables faculty to experiment with promising ideas and to try new approaches. This fund was previously called the Climate Impact Innovation Fund. The Three Cairns Group is a mission-driven investment and philanthropic firm focused on the climate crisis. It develops and supports cross-sector initiatives to accelerate the clean energy transition and drive transformative, equitable progress.
Initiation Grants
Listening to the Forest
Participants: Matthew Suttor, Center for Collaborative Arts and Media; Judith Lichtman, Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology, Yale School of Public Health; Jonathan Gewirtzman, Yale School of the Environment; Roeland Hancock, Wu Tsai Institute; Konrad Kaczmarek, Department of Music; Diego Ellis Soto, UC Berkeley
Through multisensory, inclusive experiences, the forest becomes the concert hall, classroom, and guide—inviting audiences into an immersive, data-driven sound installation that brings ecological rhythms to life. Launching at Harvard Forest in 2025, visitors will use the Listening to the Forest app to “listen” to real-time ecological data. Each tree, plant, or observation point offers a unique, evolving soundscape shaped by ecological processes such as carbon exchange, sap flow, and growth—invisible to human senses by physics or timescale. By combining art, science, and technology, Listening to the Forest aims to deepen public understanding of environmental change, support inclusive ecological education, and provide new tools for climate research.
Mobilizing Social Science and Practitioner Experience to Open New Channels from Climate Knowledge to Climate Action
Participants: Rene Almeling, Department of Sociology; Jessica Seddon, Jackson School of Global Affairs
The gap between climate evidence and climate action is striking. It is also not unique: knowledge of problems and solutions often outweighs substantive responses for other complex societal challenges such as poverty or violence. This project seeks to bring together insights from social scientific researchers and practitioners across a variety of issue areas to map the channels that connect knowledge to action, identify common ways in which they break down, and develop a menu of ways for researchers, policymakers, and institutional designers to strengthen the flow of evidence into action. The identified methods for inspiring action will be disseminated to science-policy practitioner communities and can be used to generate new curricular materials for graduate and undergraduate classes.
Planning for a Yale Program in National Security, Intelligence, and the Environment
Participants: Eli Fenichel, Yale School of the Environment; Jessica Seddon, Jackson School of Global Affairs; Karen Seto, Yale School of the Environment; Gerald Torres, Yale School of the Environment and Yale Law School
Being able to provide intelligence and security communities with the expertise they need to address climate change and other environmental risks will have long-term effects on efforts to develop planetary solutions to such challenges. However, there are barriers to developing a program that links these critical areas. One key challenge is that it requires bringing together topical expertise residing across academic disciplines with the practical expertise residing in the intelligence and national security communities. This project will begin building the bridges necessary to design a renowned program connecting these fields. In the long term, the aim is to train students at Yale for interdisciplinary careers where they can integrate sophisticated thinking about global environmental challenges into the daily work of the national security and intelligence communities.
Redesigning Feeding America’s Real-Time Donation System
Participants: Vahideh Manshadi, Yale School of Management; Daniela Saban, Stanford Graduate School of Business; Soonbong Lee, Yale School of Management; Daniella Enongene, Feeding America
Food waste is responsible for 8-10% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. Food insecurity, meanwhile, affects 47 million Americans, particularly those from marginalized communities. Food rescue is a promising solution that addresses these grand challenges simultaneously. In collaboration with Feeding America, this project aims to improve MealConnect, Feeding America’s food rescue app, using artificial intelligence, data science, and optimization. The goal is to significantly reduce the amount of donated food that goes to waste, make allocation more equitable across receiving agencies, and automate decision-making to enable future scale-up.
Resilient Rivers: Historical Lessons for Climate Adaptation and Sustainable Governance
Participants: Joseph Manning, Department of History; Jennifer Marlon, Yale School of the Environment; Selga Medenieks, MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies; Allegra LeGrande, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Joe Morgan, Oklahoma University; Kostas Tsigaridis, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Francis Ludlow, Trinity College Dublin; Ram Singh, New York University; Alexander Stine, San Francisco State University; Jim Stagge, Ohio State University
In a time of accelerating ecological crises, actionable insights from history are a valuable tool to inform today’s preparation and adaptation plans. This project will build on the Yale Nile Initiative, an international collaboration exploring the response of ancient riverine societies to extreme climate events. An intensive interdisciplinary workshop will convene climate scientists, historians, and regional experts—including African and Middle Eastern participants—to consolidate and expand relevant data across traditionally siloed fields. The event will take an optimistic, evidence-based approach: that understanding how past societies endured—and sometimes thrived—amid environmental stress can help inform smarter, more resilient strategies today.
Acceleration Grants
A Novel Species-Selective Rodenticide: a Humane, Environmentally Safe Solution to Protect Biodiversity and Agriculture
Participants: Craig Crews, Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology; Jonathan Birabaharan, Yale Ventures
Traditional rodenticides have caused raptor decline and endangered species loss leading to proposed legislation banning their use. These poisons act slowly, causing prolonged suffering and resistance buildup, while contaminating ecosystems and harming natural predators. This project team is developing a humane and environmentally responsible rodenticide that is mouse-specific. Unlike conventional rodenticides, it is non-toxic and non-accumulative in other species. This solution aims to mitigate environmental harm and biodiversity loss to meet the demands of increasing regulatory restrictions. In vivo proof-of-concept studies will lay the groundwork for commercialization and stakeholder engagement.
AI-Powered, Low-Cost Soil Carbon Verification: Scalable and Continuous Monitoring for Agricultural Carbon Credits
Participants: Leandros Tassiulas, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Department of Computer Science, Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science; Mark Bradford, Yale School of the Environment; Jian Ding, Department of Computer Science, Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science
Accurately measuring soil carbon is essential for carbon credit programs and sustainable land management, but current methods are expensive and infrequent, limiting their scalability. This project develops an AI-powered, low-cost soil sensing system for frequent, automated carbon monitoring. The research will focus on adaptive AI calibration models and integrating geospatial mapping to improve accuracy and scalability. By generating a rich, open-access soil carbon database, the project will contribute new scientific insights into soil carbon dynamics, enhancing the accuracy and transparency of carbon credit verification. This will lay the foundation for more farms to participate in carbon markets and adopt regenerative practices. In the long term, the technology and data produced here could help set new standards for cost-effective carbon verification, particularly for underrepresented small and mid-sized farms who are currently excluded from participating due to high verification costs.
Ambient Temperature and Pregnancy Outcomes of Women with Autoimmune Diseases
Participants: Eugenia Chock, Department of Medicine, Yale School of Medicine; Zeyan Liew, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Yale School of Public Health; Kai Chen, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Yale School of Public Health; Joshua Warren, Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health; Hugh Taylor, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, Yale School of Medicine
Autoimmune Diseases (ADs) are health conditions caused by dysregulation of the immune system, resulting in destruction of organs by the individual’s own immune system. They affect 5-10% population, and 80% of individuals affected by ADs are women. Women with ADs are especially vulnerable during pregnancy due to increased risks of flare-ups. In addition, heat and stress are known triggers of the immune system. By studying ~50,000 pregnancies affected by ADs, this project will coordinate a multidisciplinary effort to investigate the effect of high ambient temperatures on pregnancy outcomes and healthcare utilization among women with ADs. In addition, the project will result in a novel patient-clinician program that raises awareness of the effects of high temperatures among pregnant women with ADs.
Biphasic Carbon Capture and Conversion using Proton-Coupled Electron Transfer
Participants: David Kwabi, Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science; Lea Winter, Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science
Large-scale capture and utilization of atmospheric CO2 is vital for mitigating climate change. Unfortunately, conventional carbon capture is energy intensive and expensive. This project will develop a potentially transformative new electrochemical process for the combined capture and conversion of CO2 into valuable chemicals. Compared to conventional electrochemical CO2 conversion in aqueous electrolytes, the project team hypothesizes that their process will boost CO2 conversion efficiency. In addition, it can be powered by renewable electricity and use CO2 emissions to meet the growing demand for carbon-neutral chemicals and fuels.
climate Action and Information for communities (cAIc)
Participants: Michel Gelobter, Yale School of the Environment
The political will of those most affected by climate change is needed to drive policy change, but the lack of contextualizing data, stories, and connections is a barrier to solutions. This project will pilot a distributed and scalable multi-modal generative AI that builds power for disadvantaged communities at the frontline of climate impacts in Harlem, Connecticut, Dakar, and beyond. By generating foundational stories, data, tools, and strategies on a common platform that networks communities across regions, the project aims to radically accelerate the capacity, innovation, and power of frontline communities in ways that transform the field of climate action for the better. The generative tool will produce increasingly effective communication materials across and within communities while, at a deeper level, powering strategy informed by increasingly diverse sources.
Climate-Driven Global Expansion of Dengue Endemicity
Participants: Nathan Grubaugh, Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health; Colin Carlson, Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health; C. Brandon Ogbunugafor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Elizabeth Yankovsky, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences; Rafael Lopes, Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health; Hailey Robertson, Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health; Yi Ting Chew, Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health; Andrea Morrison, Florida Department of Health
Human-accelerated global changes to climate and land use are fundamentally altering the dynamics of infectious diseases. Driven by these forces, mosquito-borne dengue virus (DENV) is rapidly emerging into Florida, Europe, and parts of South America, putting millions of people at risk and disrupting health systems. This project will use machine learning to define the necessary climate and socio-economic conditions for DENV transmission, predict the real-time expansion of endemic transmission due to climate change, and develop public health tools to locally track this expansion in real-time. The project team will evaluate their models by working with the Florida Department of Health, where DENV is an urgent problem. The impact of this project will go beyond the study of DENV, allowing knowledge transfer to other major vector-borne disease systems affected by climate change, and to climate-based global health planning more generally.
Design for Deglaciation: Spatial Protocols, Anticipatory Planning and Scenarios of Land Use for a Disappearing Cryosphere
Participants: Bimal Mendis, Yale School of Architecture; Joyce Hsiang, Yale School of Architecture; Þorvarður Árnason, University of Iceland
As glaciers melt, landmasses that had been concealed for thousands of years are rapidly revealed. Uncharted and unprotected, these new landscapes are contested, subject to divergent demands from extraction and production to conservation and preservation. What could responsible development look like? Through field work, site analysis, and a participatory multi-stakeholder planning process, this project will develop a multifaceted framework for land use and give spatial dimension to the unique ecologies, identities, and landforms at risk. Using Vatnajökull in Iceland as a case study, the project will develop spatial protocols and scenarios for adaptation that will advance the protection and management of these post-glacial landscapes and develop proof-of-concepts for similar sites in the Arctic.
Developing an Energy Proportional Switch
Participants: Robert Soule, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Department of Computer Science, Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science; Rajit Manohar, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Department of Computer Science, Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science
The Information and Communications Technology industry’s estimated consumption of worldwide electricity stands at 2-3%, and it is predicted to increase to between 8-21% by 2030. Network devices are particularly energy inefficient, consuming significant power even when they are idle and there is no data to communicate. This means that the power consumption of the network infrastructure cannot currently adapt to usage. As a result, policies that incentivize more efficient energy usage are ineffective. This project aims to address this problem via the development of network devices with novel circuit designs that use energy in proportion to the amount of network traffic they are servicing. Success will be quantified by measuring the power consumption of the new circuit design and comparing it to the power consumption of existing devices.
Financing Investments in the Energy Efficiency and Resiliency of Real Estate
Participants: Cameron LaPoint, Yale School of Management; Aymeric Bellon, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Aurel Rochell, Tobin Center for Economic Policy
Climate change is intensifying the frequency and severity of natural disasters, amplifying the need for resilient housing and increasing repair costs for U.S. households. Further, reducing carbon emissions to meet global targets requires substantial investment in energy retrofit projects. Current financing methods fall short of meeting these needs, and understanding how to design effective solutions is crucial for advancing sustainable building practices. This project fills this gap by evaluating the role of Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) loans – a market which has grown by 71% since 2020 – in financing these necessary improvements. The study will provide critical evidence on the benefits and risks of these loans, help policymakers craft regulations that protect consumers, and promote sustainable housing investments.
Harnessing AI for Climate Change Mitigation and Resilience
Participants: Rohini Pande, Department of Economics; Lucy Page, University of Pittsburgh; Luke Sanford, Yale School of the Environment; Maike Pfeiffer, Yale School of the Environment
Climate change is transforming our planet, and deforestation threatens carbon sinks in vulnerable areas. Artificial Intelligence (AI) may provide promising tools for addressing mitigation and adaptation challenges in fast-growing but low state capacity countries like India. Current programs that offer incentives to landowners in exchange for sustainable land management practices often conserve forests under minimal threat, leaving endangered ecosystems vulnerable. This project reimagines forest conservation in India by using AI to identify critical carbon sinks before they’re lost. The team is also developing an AI tool that transforms climate predictions into actionable insights for local officials’ adaptation investments. These technology-powered climate solutions bridge science and impact, with outcomes measured as forests saved, carbon sequestered, and climate-smart investments deployed.
Hidden Climate Benefits: Leveraging Cover Crops to Protect Forest Edges in the Amazon
Participants: Paulo Brando, Yale School of the Environment; Xuhui Lee, Yale School of the Environment; Leandro Maracahipes, Yale School of the Environment; Bela Starinchak, Yale School of the Environment; Nadav Bendavid, Yale School of the Environment; Skye Hellenkemp, Yale School of the Environment; Marcia Macedo, Columbia University, Woodwell Climate Research Center; Michael Coe, Woodwell Climate Research Center; Ane Alencar, IPAM; Leonardo Maracahipes-Santos
In the southeastern Amazon and other tropical frontiers, producers are increasingly using deeper-rooted cover crops to improve soil health. Could this practice offer a scalable solution that promotes conservation of natural ecosystems? The potential for cover crops to reduce tree heat stress and mortality in adjacent forest edges remains unknown. Leveraging a unique long-term research site with over 20 years of forest inventory data, the project team will combine field data, drone imagery, machine learning, and satellite observations to assess whether cover crops cool microclimates, reduce forest stress, and mitigate carbon and biodiversity loss. If they do, the project will reveal an overlooked climate benefit offering a scalable, low-cost strategy for improving forest resilience in tropical agricultural frontiers.
Incentivizing Sustainable Agricultural Practices Using Satellite Technology
Participants: Nicholas Ryan, Department of Economics; Steven Brownstone, University of California, San Diego; Naveen Kumar G., BGS College of Engineering & Technology; Aparna Raturi, CarbonFarm
Climate change disproportionately affects poor countries and communities. Because traditional farming practices are resource-intensive and a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture is both highly vulnerable and a key opportunity for low-cost mitigation. This project targets methane emissions and water scarcity in rice farming by combining satellite monitoring with direct farmer incentives to promote techniques like Alternate Wetting and Drying and Direct Seeded Rice – practices that can reduce methane emissions by up to 79%, conserve groundwater, and reduce electricity demand for irrigation. Satellite-based verification makes it viable to track sustainable practices across fragmented smallholdings. The project team’s approach turns small-scale agriculture into a platform for measurable emissions reductions while improving farmer livelihoods.
Leveraging “RNA Signatures” to Optimize Microalgal Biorefineries
Participants: Karla Neugebauer, Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Department of Cell Biology, Yale School of Medicine; Hanno Erythropel, Yale School of the Environment; Paul Anastas, Yale School of the Environment; Guillermina Kubaczka, Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale School of Medicine; Audry Rakozy, Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale School of Medicine
Natural Capital Accounting of Soil
Participants: Eli Fenichel, Yale School of the Environment; Stephen Wood, The Nature Conservancy; Mark Bradford, Yale School of the Environment
Sustainable soil management is critical to mitigating climate change and improving water quality in freshwater and coastal ecosystems. This project aims to generate the first natural capital valuation of soil and lay the foundations for soil accounting. In partnership with The Nature Conservancy, the team intends to leverage tax assessment data, parcel-level farm practices, and soil properties to develop a prototype of soil monetary accounting. This analysis will be done with the Upper Mississippi River Foodscape project, a coalition of public, private, and civil society partners working to increase incentives for farmers to adopt farming practices that restore natural capital.
Scaling Community-Sensing and Recalling of Historical Climate Impact Data
Participants: J. Nicolas Hernandez-Aguilera, Yale School of the Environment; Jennifer Marlon, Yale School of the Environment; Cesar Echeverry
A major challenge in finding planetary solutions for climate change is engaging the marginalized communities who are most affected. One striking example is the hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers particularly vulnerable to climate hazards. They make up most of the 768 million people facing hunger, yet 95% of research is irrelevant to them, and few studies include their data or voices. Using iKON, a low-cost, scalable tool that harnesses SMS and gamification, this project redefines how climate impact data is generated, positioning smallholder farmers as active contributors to climate intelligence. These data will improve the accuracy of crop modeling, early warning systems, and climate risk tools. Beyond scaling and better articulating community and remote sensing sources, the project supports behavioral and institutional shifts, builds climate literacy among marginalized rural groups, and equips policymakers and researchers with more timely, community-informed insights to design local interventions.
Validation of a Novel Solid State Alkalinity Sensor for Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal
Participants: Peter Raymond, Yale School of the Environment; Elizabeth Yankovsky, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences; Mingyu Zhang, Yale School of the Environment; Kira Biener, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences; Nicolas Theunissen, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences; Isabella Chiaravalloti, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences
Accurately measuring ocean alkalinity is essential for understanding the ocean’s role in the carbon cycle and ocean acidification, both of which are critical for addressing climate change. However, traditional sampling and laboratory analysis is labor-intensive, costly, and limited in coverage. This project will assess novel alkalinity sensor technologies that have the potential to transform marine carbonate system monitoring — by enabling real-time, high-resolution, automated measurements — and compare them with high-precision academic research methods. The project goal is to provide a scalable solution for ocean carbon cycling and acidification studies, as well as marine carbon dioxide removal. Accurate measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification that is financially operable at scale will improve the credibility of voluntary carbon markets, ensuring that carbon removal claims are robust.
Yale Climate Change & Animal Agriculture Litigation Initiative
Participants: Viveca Morris, Yale Law School; Doug Kysar, Yale Law School; Daina Bray, Yale Law School
The Yale Climate Change & Animal Agriculture Litigation Initiative is a first-of-its-kind academic accountability program focused on using the legal system to address the climate harms of industrial animal agriculture. Agribusinesses have not received legal or regulatory scrutiny commensurate with their share of climate pollution, and the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow and remain effectively unregulated in the US and in most of the world. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, litigation is emerging as a critical tool. Multidisciplinary expertise is critical to support such litigation, in light of the complexities of establishing legal accountability for climate change. After launching four years ago, the initiative is now well positioned to scale up and expand its work, transforming knowledge into real world action in partnership with outside NGOs and lawyers.
Constellation Grant
Portable Destruction of High-GWP Refrigerants Using Low-Temperature Plasma-Water Arc
Participant: Lea Winter, Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science
Hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) gases have ultra-high global warming potentials, typically between 700-13,000 times the potency of CO2. Vast banks of HFCs within ubiquitous cooling equipment and storage tanks leak or are intentionally released to the atmosphere. Current destruction technologies are insufficiently deployed, costly, energy intensive, and can generate toxic PFAS. This proposal will develop and pilot a new approach to HFC destruction, transforming the technology from bench scale into a market-ready solution. This phase of the project will center on pre-commercial activities, including testing a wider range of HFCs, prototype and scale engineering, and collaboration with industry and non-profit stakeholders. This new system could prevent the release of gigatons of CO2e emissions to the atmosphere, representing a significant contribution to climate change mitigation. This project is also supported by expertise from the Carbon Containment Lab.