Musical flocks, olive trees, and catalysts: With third annual round of grants, seeds are planted for 21 more planetary solutions

Musical flocks, olive trees, and catalysts: With third annual round of grants, seeds are planted for 22 more planetary solutions 

For the third year, Yale Planetary Solutions has awarded seed grants to research projects pursuing novel solutions to urgent climate and environmental problems. Totaling more than $2 million, the 2024 grants fund projects that leverage Yale’s expertise to catalyze solutions to complex environmental challenges. Bringing together researchers from a wide range of disciplines, including public health, music, ecology and evolutionary biology, and more, these projects hold great promise for accelerating action and impact on the greatest planetary challenges of our time.

Each project is interdisciplinary and designed for dissemination through education and other forms of outreach and for implementation via policy and other incentives. They fall this year into three themes: biodiversity and ecosystems; climate change; and communities and society. Several tackle challenges surrounding carbon capture and utilization, while others make use of artificial intelligence (AI). All of them focus on real-world, near-term, and potentially transformative action.

The Three Cairns Climate Impact Innovation Fund, the Natural Carbon Solutions Fund, the Simon Bates Catalyst Fund, the Science Catalyst Fund for Planetary Solutions, the Gordon Data and Environmental Sciences Research Grants, and the Science Frontiers Endowment made the grants possible. Read about the awardees below. 

Biodiversity & Ecosystems

Development of a Novel High-Throughput Drought Phenotyping Platform for Plants

Participants: Craig Brodersen, Yale School of the Environment; Amir Pahlavan, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science

As the planet heats up, plant scientists are racing to find drought-tolerant crop varieties in order to protect global food security. Professor Brodersen has invented a device that should speed up this process. Called the cavitation bubble manometer (CBM), it measures the turgor, or water pressure, inside leaves and roots. Changing cell turgor is a key way that plants react to environmental conditions. The device allows for scores of measurements each day—a vast improvement over current technologies that make 1-2 measurements daily. With this grant, researchers will use the CBM to lay the groundwork for studies of how plants respond to and recover from drought, plus screen crop varieties for the ones that perform best.

Developing Rwandan Capacity in On-Farm Native Species Restoration Processes

Participants: Eva Garen, Yale School of the Environment; Amy Vedder, Yale School of the Environment; Mark Ashton, Yale School of the Environment

Restoring degraded land in the global tropics is a massive challenge, not least because many of these lands are under intense cultivation on small farms. Since 2006, Yale’s Environmental Leadership & Training Initiative (ELTI) has conducted multi-disciplinary training workshops in the Neotropics and in Southeast Asia in the skills needed to undertake such restoration. In this project, ELTI will work with key Rwandan stakeholders to co-develop trainings focused on the adoption and long-term management of native trees on-farm. The country has publicly committed to ambitious restoration goals, and stakeholders there have expressed interest in partnering with Yale.

Integrating Forest and Carbon Monitoring and Training in Tropical Landscape Conservation and Restoration Projects

Participant: Emily (Emi) Nicholson, Yale School of the Environment

Another ELTI-related project should help boost and maintain the credibility of carbon offset programs. In programs like these, which offer people incentives to preserve carbon stocks, buyers need to be able to trust that trees being planted to offset emissions, for example, remain alive and in the ground years later. This trust depends on monitoring and verification, tasks potentially made more feasible by emerging technologies like drones, remote sensing, and AI. ELTI offers training to people who want to develop and monitor strategies to conserve and restore tropical forest landscapes, including courses specific to carbon markets. With this seed grant, ELTI can update its curriculum on carbon markets and project monitoring plus offer additional training opportunities in field techniques and these emerging technologies.

AI-Powered Identification of Tropical Tree Seedlings Using Hyperspectral and 3D Data

Participants: Liza Comita, Yale School of the Environment; Holly Rushmeier, Department of Computer Science; Luke Browne, Yale School of the Environment; Nohemi Huanca-Nunez, Yale School of the Environment; Helene Muller-Landau, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Tropical forests contain incredibly high biodiversity but face multiple threats, contributing to the global biodiversity crisis. Studying tropical forest ecology is difficult because the sheer variety of co-existing species makes data collection challenging. Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to make large-scale, species-specific data collection on ecological function easier. AI can sort through vast quantities of data collected by tools like smartphones or remote sensing, identify species, and spot subtle differences in color or anatomy that can shed light on how the plants function within the ecosystem. In this project, researchers will collect hyperspectral and laser scanning data on over 150 tropical tree species in Panama, train AI to identify them, and link this information to long-term data on plant performance across environmental gradients. This AI approach and others like it should help researchers better understand and conserve biodiversity in species-rich forests around the world.

Detecting Early-Warning Signals of Animal Disease from Space ─ Year 2

Participants: Vanessa Ezenwa, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Will Rogers, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Steve Chang, Departments of Psychology and of Neuroscience; Lacey Hughey, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute; Jared Stabach, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute; Caleb Robinson, Microsoft AI for Good Research Lab

AI may also help researchers develop a surprising new pandemic early-warning system. Monitoring wild animals for infectious disease outbreaks is a critical part of not only ecosystem management and biodiversity protection, but also of pandemic preparedness, since many diseases that devastate humans originate in the wild. But surveillance is difficult, making it hard to detect such threats early. A solution might come from space. Sick people and animals move their bodies differently than they do when they are healthy. Their social interactions are also significantly disrupted. High-resolution satellite imaging processed with AI might spot abnormal movements suggesting animals are ill—a possibility the researchers explored with captive buffalo herds in the first year of this project. In herds with higher levels of bovine tuberculosis, they found, animals tended to keep more distance from one another. Renewed this year, this seed grant will continue to study how AI might allow for automated detection of wildlife diseases from space.

AI for REsilient WildFIRE Management (AI-REFIRE)

Participants: Alex Wong, Department of Computer Science, Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science; Rex Ying, Department of Computer Science; Tarek Kandakji, Yale School of the Environment; Nadia Ahmad, Yale Law School; Xuhui Lee, Yale School of the Environment

Satellite imagery and AI may also help humans manage wildfires. Climate change is fueling wildfires of unprecedented intensity. These fires present major challenges, including prevention, forecasting, detection, emergency response, and fire-adapting human settlements. In this project, researchers aim to build an AI platform that covers the spectrum of wildfire management. Bringing together multiple types of data—from satellite imagery to terrain models, social media to weather maps—AI-REFIRE will create forecasts, advise on resource allocation during fire responses, and help plan rebuilds. To judge the platform’s success, the researchers will track changes with metrics like wildfire frequency, size and intensity; response timeliness; evacuation-related injuries, and community trust.

Climate Change

Arctic Climate Research Hub at Yale

Participants: Justin Farrell, Yale School of the Environment; Ross Martin, Yale School of the Environment; Oswald Schmitz, Yale School of the Environment

High-latitude ecosystems are warming faster than anywhere else on Earth. Understanding how climate change affects this region, from reduced ice cover to permafrost melt to wildfires, is critically important to developing accurate global climate models and good policy. Yet data from this remote region is scarce. The Arctic Climate Research Hub aims to develop partnerships among Yale researchers, Indigenous knowledge holders, Tribal nations, and rural Alaskans to integrate Traditional Ecological Knowledge with Arctic ecology and climate science. Equitably co-producing knowledge with local and Indigenous communities has been listed as a crucial goal by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Science Foundation. The Arctic Climate Research Hub is committed to collaborative, solution-oriented research that advances community climate resiliency and Arctic ecology.

Simultaneous Carbon Capture and Utilization Using a Bipolar Membrane-Assisted Electrochemical Cell

Participants: Menachem Elimelech, Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science; Yuan Yao, Yale School of the Environment

Capturing CO₂ from air, seawater, or sources like factories is necessary to help limit global warming. Once captured, the carbon can be stored underground or converted to valuable products like carbon monoxide, a building block for many useful compounds. Combining capture and utilization could make carbon management more efficient and cost-effective. This project aims to develop an electrochemical process to capture and utilize carbon simultaneously in a single device, plus calculate its economic viability. The researchers are studying the use of a bipolar membrane, which can control the flow and concentration of ions, to help regulate pH near each electrode, enabling capture of CO₂ under alkaline conditions and its transformation to carbon monoxide under acidic conditions.

Using Electric Fields Caused by Lewis Acid Binding to Tune Electrocatalytic Carbon Dioxide Reduction

Participants: Nilay Hazari, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Mingjiang Zhong, Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science

Carbon sequestration, though crucial to reducing CO₂ in the atmosphere, also holds further promise—that the carbon might be utilized in place of fossil fuels to produce fuels, valuable chemicals, and plastics. This could take place by converting CO₂ into carbon monoxide, a valuable chemical precursor. Decarbonizing the chemical industry holds huge promise, and the market for such utilization products could be massive. Yet a lack of practical catalysts is slowing development. Biological systems can lower the energy required to facilitate a chemical reaction with electric fields; this project hypothesizes that an industrial catalyst could imitate this property. Thus, this research team is piecing iron, cobalt, carbon, and other atoms into novel molecules that could be the efficient, stable, and selective catalysts that a decarbonized chemical industry needs.

Solar-Powered Liquid Fuel Production from CO₂

Participants: Hailiang Wang, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Mengxia Liu, Department of Electrical Engineering, Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science

In addition to carbon monoxide, methanol is another valuable material that can be made from CO₂. This energy-dense liquid is traditionally synthesized from fossil fuels in a carbon-intensive process, one that is hard to achieve in remote areas lacking the infrastructure. Making methanol from only CO₂, water, and solar power, on the other hand, could bring energy abundance and independence to off-grid parts of the world. As with efforts to make carbon monoxide, the trick is finding the right catalyst. This research team has already synthesized methanol from CO₂ using an innovative material made of cobalt phthalocyanine and carbon nanotubes. With this seed grant, they aim to refine their materials to improve efficiency of the CO₂-to-methanol conversion, plus prepare to apply for grants from federal agencies that are already interested in the technology.

Hybrid Organic–Inorganic Heterostructures for Photocatalytic CO₂ Conversion

Participants: Eric Altman, Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science; Charles Ahn, Departments of Applied Physics, of Mechanical Engineering, and of Physics; Nilay Hazari, Department of Chemistry; Sohrab Ismail-Beigi, Departments of Applied Physics, of Mechanical Engineering, of Materials Science and of Physics; Frederick Walker

Making fuels from captured CO₂ could transform aviation, shipping, and trucking— industries that are particularly tough to decarbonize, as their large fuel-dependent engines do not lend themselves to electric alternatives. A way around the problem could be to make those fuels carbon-neutral by capturing CO₂ and using light energy to transform it into fuel precursors like methanol. With this grant, researchers will explore a composite catalyst that links a photoabsorbent semiconductor layer to an oxide layer. The semiconductor uses light to excite electrons, which then migrate via the oxide layer to the catalytic surface where they react with and reduce CO₂ molecules.

Optimizing Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) Compositions to Reduce the Climate Impacts of Contrails and Improve Local Air Quality

Participants: Charles McEnally, Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science; Lisa Pfefferle, Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science; Victor Batista, Department of Chemistry

Another effort to reduce aviation’s environmental effects focuses on soot emissions. Jet engines burning hydrocarbon fuels emit not only CO₂ but also tiny soot particles that harm human health and worsen climate change. Different fuels produce varying amounts of soot, and these researchers have developed a method to measure this tendency. This seed grant will enable them to rank a wide range of fuels, including more costly sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs), based on their soot emissions. Demonstrating that some SAFs produce lower particulate emissions strengthens the economic case for their adoption. Additionally, the researchers will use a machine learning tool to identify next-generation aviation fuels with lower soot emissions.

Connecting Methane Emissions to Methane Ecology in Aquatic Systems

Participants: Peter Raymond, Yale School of the Environment; Jordan Peccia, Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that accounts for fully one-fifth of global warming. Freshwater bodies like lakes, streams, and reservoirs are major methane emitters, so much so that methane from reservoirs cancels out some of hydropower’s CO₂ advantage. The gas is produced by bacteria in oxygen-starved bottom layers of the water bodies. This project will study methane emissions and the ecology of microbes that produce and oxidize methane, focusing on the Connecticut River watershed as well as on a group of reservoirs in Nepal, which is ramping up hydropower. Better understanding methane oxidation and emissions should help decisionmakers calculate hydropower’s overarching effects.

Evolutionary Response of Dengue Virus to Environmental Change and Novel Control Strategies

Participants: Chantal Vogels, Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health; Paul Turner, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Maudry Laurent-Rolle, Department of Internal Medicine, section of Infectious Diseases, Yale School of Medicine; Carolina Lucas, Department of Immunobiology, Yale School of Medicine; Nathan Grubaugh, Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health; James Weger-Lucarelli, Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology, Virginia Tech

Dengue fever is on the move. Propelled by climate change, this serious mosquito-borne viral infection is spreading to new territories and has come to menace over half the planet’s population. Attempts are underway to curb dengue with vaccines and biological controls, but whether effective measures will keep on working is unclear. This project will use a tool called deep mutational scanning to study how dengue and other mosquito-borne viruses might evolve to adapt to new environments and novel control efforts. What the researchers learn will help us predict risk from mosquito-borne infections and evaluate whether attempts at control will be sustainable.

Addressing Climate Change Through the Music of Bird Murmuration

Participants: Judith Lichtman, Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology, Yale School of Public Health; Matthew Suttor, Center for Collaborative Arts and Media, Yale School of Drama; Konrad Kaczmarek, Department of Music; Neal Baer, Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology, Yale School of Public Health; Richard Prum, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Diego Soto, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Jonathon Gewirtzman, Yale School of the Environment; Vivek Sridhar, Ecology of Animal Sciences, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior

Music is a universal language that can communicate both time and emotion. Compositions can powerfully depict natural phenomena, such as cyclic systems, climate trends, or mass movements among animals. Its emotional effects may deepen awareness and increase motivation to solve environmental problems. This project will teach New Haven schoolchildren to transform scientific data on natural processes, such as the flight patterns of flocking birds, into musical compositions. It will use mapping and AI tools to turn the birds’ positions into sound. This project in acoustic ecology will help foster environmental stewardship to become part of children’s sense of themselves. Moreover, this project should increase the children’s agency to communicate about environmental issues.

Communities & Societies

Addressing Energy, Health, Jobs, Nutrition, Soil Health, Water, and Climate Change Through an Integrated Bioeconomy Approach

Participants: Paul Anastas, Yale School of the Environment and Yale School of Public Health; Vasilis Vasiliou, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Yale School of Public Health; Hanno Erythropel, Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science, Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering; Tassos Kyriakides, Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health;

In places contending with aridity; soil depletion; inadequate food, jobs, and energy; and climate stressors, planting trees can improve many of these problems at once. This intercontinental partnership aims to plant trees appropriate for marginal areas in Uganda where they can simultaneously hold on to water and carbon, improve the soil, and create jobs harvesting food crops and biofuels. This project will gather data on the beneficial effects of large-scale plantings and lay the groundwork for long-term funding from global organizations. It is designed to be scalable and replicable in other locations.

Better Economic Models for Smarter Climate Policy – Year 2

Participant: Steve Berry, Department of Economics

Decision-makers grappling with climate change must often rely on economic models, or math-based predictions of the effects a particular policy might have. Many of these models are outdated, yielding misleading results that can lead to useless or damaging policies. Renewed for a second year, this seed grant will allow researchers to continue improving the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of these models, plus spur their uptake by policymakers. The team will model the environmental costs of biofuels; optimize investments in the energy grid; and study how economic production affects the global water cycle.

The Success Lab: Amplifying the Social Sciences and Humanities for Environmental Solutions

Participants: Amity Doolittle, Yale School of the Environment; Michelle Bell, Yale School of the Environment; Shimon Anisfeld, Yale School of the Environment; Marlyse Duguid, Yale School of the Environment; Paul Sabin, Department of History and Department of American Studies; Elihu Rubin, Yale School of Architecture and Department of American Studies

Using tools from a variety of disciplines, the Success Lab aims to study local, place-based environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are successfully driving change for social equity and environmental sustainability. Focusing on two highly impactful NGOs as pilot case-studies, we will develop and implement a research methodology aimed at understanding the science, policy, and society interface. The project will explore the question of whether the impacts of the case studies are outliers or if there are common factors that can be replicated across varied socio-ecological contexts. By re-envisioning the metrics of success, the project aims to shed light on the NGO strategies most likely to create durable real-world solutions.

The Science, Policies, and Ethics of Climate Migration: Disrupting the Negative Feedbacks Between Climate and Migration Politics

Participants: Michel Gelobter, Yale School of the Environment; Maya Prabhu, Yale Law School; Gerald Torres, Yale Law School; Daniel Wilkinson, Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs

Climate-fueled global migration can polarize migrant-receiving communities, which can in turn erode the societal cooperation needed for climate decision-making. Breaking this vicious cycle will require a better understanding of how climate change contributes to migration and of how local and international policies address migration. This project will use case studies to examine links between climate migration and climate policy, including a study of climate migrants living in the New Haven area.

Transportation Electrification at Scale: Catalyzing a Sustained Strategy for YPS Research-to-Impact – Year 2

Participant: Kenneth Gillingham, Yale School of the Environment 

 Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in both the United States as a whole and Connecticut specifically. Electrifying this sector is paramount, yet according to many estimates the country has only about one-tenth the number of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations it will ultimately need. Where should we put the rest? It’s an expensive and high-stakes infrastructure question. Last year, funded by a Planetary Solutions seed grant, Gillingham’s team began working with Connecticut state officials on a way to determine optimal investments in EV charging infrastructure. Their method, which they aim to complete this year, is informed by forecasting EV demand with geographic specificity and modeling the consequences of different choices of charging infrastructure investment for consumer welfare, emissions, and equity. This information should provide policy makers with new tools to boost demand for EVs equitably—particularly in communities that haven’t yet shared in the benefits of this new technology.  

Building Dense Cities with Forest Biomass: Resilient Regional Forests and Regenerative Urban Construction

Participants: Alan Organschi, Yale School of Architecture; Barbara Reck, Yale School of the Environment; Sara Kuebbing, Yale School of the Environment; Joseph Orefice, Yale School of the Environment

Urbanization hits the planet hard. Standard construction materials like steel and concrete carry a large carbon footprint, contributing to the global building sector’s 40% share of annual greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, the earth’s forest ecosystems and the services they provide—clean water, biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and so on—are in steep decline thanks to climate change and human activity. Enter mass timber, a novel engineered wood building product that can replace more carbon-intensive structural materials for mid-rise urban buildings, incentivize responsible forest management, and turn cities into places of long-term carbon storage rather than emissions. This project aims to study how these products might contribute to a mutually beneficial relationship between cities and forests by focusing on regional supply chains in Southern New England.