Category: ISF News

Dozens of students showed off their sustainability-related summer research projects at this year’s Summer 2025 Undergraduate Research Symposium, held on Wednesday, July 30th. In addition to ISF-supported DUIRI projects, many other faculty affiliates supported summer projects. Read more about their work here.

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Purdue’s Institute for a Sustainable Future was recently awarded 1.2 Petabytes of hard disk drive (HDD) storage from Western Digital to further enable research that relies on quick access to big data repositories. This award, granted through Western Digital’s Petabyte Innovation Quest (PIQ “PEAK” Award), helps bolster Purdue’s robust ecosystem of data services and data-driven models by creating the Purdue One Health Data Engine (POHDE)—a storage facility aimed at facilitating research spanning disciplines from weather and climate, to ecosystem health, to environmental toxicology, to plant and animal health, to personalized human health.

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The 2024-2025 academic year saw the team significantly advance research in, and awareness of, PFAS around the state and nation through publications, events, education and outreach. A key aspect of the team’s efforts this year has involved engaging scientists, state employees and the general public through webinars, in-person events and seminars, as well as through the publication of the Indiana Statewide PFAS Assessment, a public-facing report the provides important PFAS information and results from the work of scientists from around the state of Indiana. The publication received an “Outstanding Achievement Award” from the Indiana Water Resources Association in June.

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Dr. Ximena E. Bernal, a professor in Purdue University’s Department of Biological Sciences, and faculty affiliate of the Purdue Institute for a Sustainable Future, has co-authored a new study which has uncovered how young fringe-lipped bats (Trachops cirrhosis) learn to identify and hunt prey—not through instinct, but by listening, learning the mating calls of their prey, and observing mature bats.

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ISF is excited to announce the PDF release of our Semester in Review publication, capturing the highlights, achievements, and significant moments from Fall 2024.

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Just in time for Purdue’s annual Spring Fest, ISF, working with the Campus Sustainability Working Group, has released an initial version of the “Campus Guide to Sustainable Living.”

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ISF’s strategic research team in PFAS has recently completed the first Indiana Statewide PFAS Assessment. This collaborative report, written with contributions by PFAS experts from multiple universities, brings together collective knowledge and research from scientists from numerous state universities, including Purdue, IU-Bloomington and Notre Dame, as well as from state agencies.

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Part of the work of the Campus Sustainability Working Group is to conduct surveys to gain insight into sustainability knowledge, behavior and campus culture at Purdue. The first of these surveys, focusing on undergraduates, will be conducted from April 10th-20th, 2025.

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A new report, the Purdue STARS Performance Assessment(SPA), was recently published by Purdue’s Institute for a Sustainable Future (ISF), a research institute launched in 2023 as part of the Institutes and Centers at Discovery Park District.

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Andrew Whelton (CCE/EEE) is featured in this Los Angeles Times article providing expert insights on drinking water testing and its role in ensuring water safety.

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