Weekly Newsletter

 January 19, 2021
 
 
Dear colleagues-  

As we welcome students back to campus and many of you get back in the real or virtual classroom, we encourage you to pass on information about upcoming events to students, or better yet, encourage them to sign up for our undergraduate newsletter, Earth Today.

We are quite excited to be teaming up with the Colleges of Ag and Health and Human Sciences on next week’s MLK Event on BIPOC Farmer’s in Sustainable Ag, part of our larger series of events on Environmental Justice planned for this semester. Several affiliates will be participating in this MLK panel including Zhao Ma, Nathan Shoaf and Ariana Torres.

We highlight several affiliates this week for their current research ranging from the history of tomatoes to the contamination of plastic pipes to new insights into behavior during COVID-19.  Remember to let us know about your achievements!
 
Upcoming Events
BIPOC Farmers in Sustainable Agriculture

Thursday, January 28 | 12:00 - 1:30 PM




The Center for the Environment has partnered with the College of Agriculture and the College of Health & Human Sciences to present this panel discussion as part of the colleges’ joint observation of Martin Luther King Jr. Diversity Awareness Week. In America and around the world, farmers who are Black, Indigenous and people of color face unique challenges in equitable access to grow food while practicing environmental stewardship. Representatives from Purdue faculty, Purdue Extension’s Urban Agriculture program, Purdue’s Center for Global Food Security and Indiana’s BIPOC farming community will outline these challenges and potential solutions. Currently scheduled panelists include: 

  • Gary Burniske, managing director of the Purdue Center for Global Food Security
  • Zhao Ma, professor, Purdue University Department of Forestry and Natural Resources
  • Sharrona Moore (CEO / garden manager), Lawrence Community Gardens in Indianapolis
  • Nathan Shoaf, urban agriculture coordinator, Purdue Extension
  • Ariana Torres, assistant professor, Purdue University Department of Horticulture & Landscape Architecture / Department of Agricultural Economics
  • Curtis Whittaker, Sr. (owner / founder) and Freida Graves (farm manager), Faith Farms in Gary, Indiana
Tamara Benjamin, assistant program leader for Purdue Extension’s Diversified Farming and Food Systems program, will moderate this event. Register here.
 
Environmental Justice Film Series: Return to the Andes

Thursday, February 18 | 6:00 PM




Join us for the next installment in the 2020-2021 Environmental Justice Film Series, featuring the film Return to the Andes, a documentary about Nelida Silva who returns to her Peru birthplace with a dream of helping rural women start businesses. Following the film, there will be a post screening discussion with Silva and director Mitch Teplitski. Register here.
 
Save the Date - Environmental Justice Conference



The Center for the Environment is working with several organizations on campus and in conjunction with several other institutions of higher education in Indiana (Notre Dame, IUPUI, IU Bloomington) to organize a free two-day virtual, regional, symposium entitled, “Next Steps – Environment Justice, Climate Change, and Racial Justice,” on March 25-26, 2021. This effort is being led by professor of Anthropology and recent associate director of the Center for the Environment, Laura Zanotti.  Zanotti received financial support from Purdue’s Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership as one of five grant recipients for project proposals enabling inclusion at Purdue. More information, including a schedule, here.

Registration is required to attend the Conference - register by clicking here.
 
Affiliates in the News
Intersectionality shapes adaptation to social-ecological change

New research draws on the concept of intersectionality to highlight the fact that individuals, households, and groups within the agricultural sector of Peru often adapt in different and unequal ways to the challenges that result from the changing climate. This recent study, featuring a number of C4E and Nexus affiliates, including Zhao Ma, Laura Zanotti, Jonathan Bauchet, postdocs Anna Erwin and Ruxandra Popovici, and others from both Nexus and UNSA, promotes comprehensive solutions that do not further compound the marginality that rural Indigenous people have long faced.
 
Plastic pipes are polluting drinking water systems after wildfires – it’s a risk in urban fires, too
The Conversation | December 2020



When wildfires swept through the hills near Santa Cruz, California, in 2020, they released toxic chemicals into the water supplies of at least two communities. One sample found benzene, a carcinogen, at 40 times the state’s drinking water standard. C4E affiliates Caitlin Proctor, Amisha Shah and Andrew Whelton recently released a study confirming a source of these chemicals - plastic pipes that, when heated, release harmful chemicals into drinking water supplies. The team discussed their work in this recent edition of The Conversation. Read more here.
 
Modern tomatoes can’t get same soil microbe boost as ancient ancestors
Purdue Ag Comms | January 2021



Tomato plants are especially vulnerable to foliar diseases that can kill them or impact yield. These problems require a number of pesticides in conventional crops and make organic production especially difficult. A Purdue University-led team of scientists including C4E affiliate Lori Hoagland has evidence that tomatoes may be more sensitive to these types of diseases because they’ve lost the protection offered by certain soil microbes. Continue reading.
 
Non-compulsory measures sufficiently reduced human mobility in Tokyo during the COVID-19 epidemic
Scientific Reports | 2020



This recent article, co-authored by C4E affiliate and Civil Engineering professor Satish Ukkusuri, in Nature's Scientific Reports studies the impacts of non-compulsory measures on mobility patterns in Tokyo during the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more here and be sure to check out our often-updated COVID-19 faculty research page. 
 
Funding Opportunities

COVID-19 Funding OpportunitiesThis list is updated frequently.

Limited Submission: FFAR New Innovator Award ($450K over 3 years)
FFAR intends to grant up to ten awards to early-career scientists pursuing research that supports FFAR’s Challenge Areas and promotes global, sustainable food production. New Innovator Awards are awarded to outstanding early career investigators who have been in the tenure-track position no longer than three years. Preference is given to individuals who are within eight years of receiving a Ph.D. or equivalent degree. FFAR is not requiring awardees to secure matching funds. Purdue is only allowed to nominate one eligible faculty member. The limited submission process will become available in the next several days on the following website. Internal (limited) submission: TBD**; FFAR nomination deadline: March 3rd; Full application deadline: May 5

NSF/DHS/DOT/NIH/USDA Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) 
Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are engineered systems that are built from, and depend upon, the seamless integration of computation and physical components. The CPS program aims to develop the core research needed to engineer these complex CPS, some of which may also require dependable, high-confidence, or provable behaviors. Core research areas of the program include control, data analytics, and machine learning including real-time learning for control, autonomy, design, Internet of Things (IoT), mixed initiatives including human-in- or human-on-the-loop, networking, privacy, real-time systems, safety, security, and verification.  Small and Medium proposals accepted January 8 – December 31st.  Frontier proposals accepted December 1-15th.

NSF CAREER Workshop
The Office of the Executive Vice President for Research and Partnerships is hosting a virtual workshop for faculty in all disciplines who are interested in writing a proposal for the NSF CAREER program. CAREER eligible faculty are untenured, assistant professors who have not submitted more than two previous, unsuccessful NSF CAREER proposals. Sally Bond, assistant director in Research Development Services, will present on topics including:
  • Highlights of NSF’s mission and keys to identifying the right directorate(s) for your CAREER
  • CAREER vs core NSF funding opportunities
  • Understanding the “research and education” criteria
  • Writing a compelling one-page concept paper for discussion with program officer(s)
  • Helpful resources
This virtual workshop will be held on Tuesday, February 2, from 11:30AM to 1:30PM. Registration is required by Thursday, January 28

NOAA CPO Releases Urban Extreme Heat and Health Risk Funding Opportunity
This FOA seeks proposals which would research decision-making supports for urban communities affected by extreme heat and urban heat islands. Possible directions include information dissemination, policies to improve heat resilience, and mitigation of health impacts. While institutions do not have to be located in the specified cities, applications are constrained to proposals that focus on communities involved in the National Integrated Heat Health Information System, in partnership with Climate Adaptation Planning and Analytics (NIHHIS)-(CAPA) Urban Heat Island Mapping Campaign and are required to collaborate with decision-makers in those cities. Projects should leverage existing NOAA-supported urban heat island publicly available data and any connections to NOAA’s Cooperative Institutes. The CPO expects to fund five awards for a duration of one to two years at $50,000-150,000 per year.  Full applications are due by 5:00 pm ET on February 15, 2021.

NSF Center for Advancement and Synthesis of Open Environmental Data and Sciences 
NSF seeks to establish a Center fueled by open and freely available biological and other environmental data to catalyze novel scientific questions in environmental biology through the use of data-intensive approaches, team science and research networks, and training in the accession, management, analysis, visualization, and synthesis of large data sets. The Center will provide vision for speeding discovery through the increased use of large, publicly accessible datasets to address biological research questions through collaborations with scientists in other related disciplines. Deadlines:  April 1 – LOI; April 29 – Preliminary proposal; September 15 – Full proposal
**Please note: The Center will be organizing a callout/discussion for this opportunity in early February.  Please begin considering if you are interested in this program.
 
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