The Institute for a Sustainable Future is pleased to announce the recipients of the Spring 2023 ISF travel and research grants. Recipients were chosen based on the quality of their research and alignment to the mission of ISF. Purdue’s Institute for a Sustainable Future promotes collaborative research that advances understanding of persistent global sustainability challenges as outlined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
In total, ISF awarded travel and research grants to 23 graduate students, providing approximately $16,000 in support to Purdue graduate students presenting at major conferences in their fields and/or to subsidize cost of conducting research related to sustainability. The range of topics varied widely from predicting storm surge hydrodynamics to an analysis of the U.S. salad mixes market environmental footprint to pipeline integrity management through machine learning based modeling. A full list of the awardees, their advisors, departments and research titles are listed below.
ISF expects to reopen this opportunity in Fall 2023. Students of faculty currently involved with the institute receive priority consideration. To learn more about the Institute, review our website here. To become an affiliate, apply here.
| Student | ISF Faculty Mentor | Program | Presentation/project title |
| Mohammad Ahmadi Gharehtoragh | David Johnson | Industrial Engineering | Surrogate models to predict storm surge hydrodynamics over evolving landscapes and climate forcings |
| Erangi Heenkenda | Andrew DeWoody | FNR | Cryptic and rapid speciation due to isolation and drift in an endangered pupfish |
| Les Warren | Tomas Hook | Forestry and Natural Resources | Isotopic analysis of alewife, Alosa pseudoharengus, otoliths to determine early life habitat utilization and growth in Lake Michigan |
| Utkuhan Genc | David Johnson | School of Industrial Engineering | A System Dynamics Model for Simulating Rebound Effects Induced by Energy Savings with Re-spending Scenarios |
| Abhimanyu Raj Shekhar | Shweta Singh | Agricultural & Biological Engineering | Reverse logistics of critical elements derived from electric vehicle lithium-ion batteries |
| Seho Kim | James Garrison | Aeronautics and Astronautics | Satellite Constellation Design Of Multi-Frequency Soop-R Missions For Land Remote Sensing |
| Alex Fields | Tomas Hook | Forestry and Natural Resources | Spatially and temporally heterogeneous trends in chlorophyll-a in Lake Superior from 2014-2018 |
| Maria Camila Ulloa | Ariana Torres | Horticulture and Landscape Architecture | Characterizing The U.S. Salad Mixes Market Environmental Footprint Claims |
| Andrew Mularo | Ximena Bernal & Andrew DeWoody | Biological Sciences | Selection on hearing modulates taxon diversification within a putative species complex |
| Kathryn Dix | Zhao Ma | Forestry and Natural Resources | Building or Burning Bridges: Collaboration across Knowledge systems and Wildfire Management in the Bolivian lowlands |
| Kenneth Burnell | Ellen Wells | Occupational & Environmental Health- HHS | Evaluating Exposure Hazards in Historical Collections and Museum Environment |
| Kendrick Hardaway | Hua Cai | Environmental & Ecological Engineering | 1) Assessment of Environmental Impacts for Autonomous Vehicle Data Management; 2) Environmental Impacts of Residential Relocation in the Autonomous Vehicle Era |
| Vasisht Varsh Sridhar | Jennifer Freeman | Health Sciences (Toxicology) | Understanding The Toxicological Profiles Of Dicamba And Glyphosate To Evaluate The Effect Of Roundup Xtend On Zebrafish (Danio Rerio) Embryo-Larval Model. |
| Hongbo Lu | Nusrat Jung | Civil Engineering | Real-Time TVOC Monitoring with a Photoionization Detector and a Proton Transfer Reaction Mass Spectrometer During Building Disinfection Events |
| Jeon, Jong Yoon | Andrew DeWoody | Department of Forestry and Natural Resources | The use of genomic diversity as a key conservation metric: an example using mammalian whole-genome resequencing data |
| Satya Sundar Patra | Brandon Boor | Civil Engineering | New Insights on Indoor New Particle Formation in Residential Buildings |
| Sydney Stradtman | Jennifer Freeman | Health Sciences | The kisspeptin system in the developing zebrafish and differential gene alterations following two exposure periods to the agricultural herbicide atrazine |
| Jordan Cross | Brandon Boor & Nusrat Jung | EEE | Coupling an Olfaction Chamber with Proton Transfer Reaction Mass Spectrometry for Evaluating Human Response to Scented Product Emissions |
| Katherine Pivaral | Linda Prokopy | Horticulture and Landscape Architecture | Emerging markets for diversifying agriculture: Case studies in the U.S. Corn Belt |
| Kayla Young | Leigh Raymond | Political Science, Ecological Sciences and Engineering (ESE) | Ain’t no power like the power of the youth? The effect of youth climate activists on public opinion and policy preferences about climate change |
| Xiaoyue Zhang | Chengcheng Tao | School of Construction Management | Machine learning-based risk model for pipeline integrity management |
| Junyi Duan | Chengcheng Tao | Construction Management Technology | Computational investigation of the flood impact on bridge infrastructures in the Great Lakes region |
| Isabelle Staph | Stuart Carton | Forestry of Natural Resources | Public participation in restoration, remediation, and revitalization framework in the Grand Calumet River Area of Concern |