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The five academic partners host post-doctoral fellows for a two-year period, with their research supported by a multidisciplinary sustainability cabinet and mentors from several key disciplines.
 Curtin University of Technology
London School of Economics and Political Science
Tsinghua University
University of Michigan
University of São Paulo
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Curtin University of Technology, Alcoa Research Centre for Stronger Communities
Curtin University of Technology is Western Australia's largest university, with more than 31,000 students and programs centered on providing knowledge and skills to meet industry and workplace standards.
The university's participation in the Alcoa Foundation Conservation & Sustainability Fellowship Program is focused on the south coast region of Western Australia, which has a uniqueness, diversity, and richness of ancient environments that offer a rare opportunity for sustainability research. The goal of the university's program, called "Sustaining Gondwana," is to develop and promote technologies and practices in this region that bring sustainable outcomes through greater alignment of economic development, environmental protection, and social advancement.
The area in which the research is taking place includes the Fitzgerald River National Park, which is one of the United Nations' "hot spots." In addition, the marine coast and the Stirling Ranges are among some of the most fragile areas in Australia. The region is also experiencing external drivers, such as population growth and industry imperatives, that are impacting sustainability.
The fellows' research projects are designed and implemented under the following overall research program objectives:
- Develop conceptual and methodological frameworks to study the role of technology at the interface of economic, social, and environmental processes and outcomes;
- Develop and apply appropriate indicators to measure the economic, social, and natural processes and outcomes;
- Research, document, and interpret local examples (stories) of developments at the interface of economic, social, and environmental processes and outcomes;
- Develop and pilot-test regionally relevant novel technologies and practices to achieve more sustainable outcomes;
- Derive learning from historic developments at the interface of economic, social, and environmental processes to enable replication locally, regionally, and globally; and
- Document and interpret aspects of sustainable governance with local groups within a community capacity-building framework.
The university and program fellows are collaborating and networking with a wide variety of academics, laypersons, and governmental and non-governmental agencies in the area, as well as with other universities and Conservation & Sustainability Fellowship Program participants.
Curtin's participation in the Alcoa Foundation program is a natural fit with the university's five areas of excellence in research and development-resources and energy; information and communication; health, aging and well-being; communities and changing environments; and growth and prosperity. In addition, the university has a well-established program of interdisciplinary research, which is a hallmark of the Alcoa Foundation program.
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Fellows
Dr. Alison Leigh Browne
Dr. Amma Buckley
Dr. Adam Dunn
Dr. Alan Marshall
Dr. Richard Harris
Dr. Robyn Mayes
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London School of Economics and Political Science, Centre for Environmental Policy and Governance
The academic profile of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) spans a wide range of disciplines, from economics, politics, and law to sociology, information systems, and accounting and finance. The school has approximately 7,800 full-time and 750 part-time students.
As an academic partner, LSE is undertaking the production of a significant body of research focusing on the relationship between corporations and sustainable development. It explores both governance within firms and the governance processes that exist around firms. Informed by ideas of institutional learning, LSE fellows are considering roles played by governments, markets, and civil society, as well as by the companies themselves.
LSE hopes to achieve the following through its participation in the program:
- Early career development and support for the young academics employed as program fellows;
- Strategic support for ongoing sustainability research within the school;
- A wider adoption of sustainability learning outcomes within undergraduate and postgraduate teaching;
- The dissemination of specific evidence-based solutions to sustainability practitioners (both public and private sector); and
- The dissemination of new knowledge (theoretical and empirical) on opportunities for, and constraints to, sustainability.
LSE is, by nature, an interdisciplinary organization, and the Alcoa Foundation program reinforces and feeds into this wider institutional context. The program is also accelerating the sustainability learning of the school in terms of research (e.g., the pursuit of new research questions), teaching (e.g., lecture and class content), and wider forms of discussion (e.g., seminars and discussions led by program members).
LSE-Alcoa Foundation Conservation and Sustainability Fellowship Programme Overview view PDF file
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Fellows
Dr. Ladina Caduff
Dr. Elena Lopez-Gunn
Dr. Carmen Marchiori
Dr. Joan O’Mahony
Christopher Wright
Dr. Mark Zeitoun
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Tsinghua University, Department of Environmental Science and Engineering
Located in northwest Beijing, Tsinghua University has more than 30,000 students that attend one of its 13 schools, which include the schools of science, humanities and social sciences, economics and management, and public policy and management. The university also has five independent departments, including the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering.
Under the Alcoa Foundation fellowship program, the university is conducting research to find solutions to the problems of sustainable development in rural areas in China and also propose an integrated pattern for raising the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of these areas.
The interdisciplinary approach of the fellowship program has spread to other projects and developments within the department, including a study on environmental problems and strategy for construction in rural China, an energy and environmental survey of the country's rural northern areas, and institutional reform within the department itself.
While the focus of the fellowship program is the fellows' research activities, Tsinghua is also exploring better methods in training research fellows in the field of sustainability
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Fellows
Dr. Minpeng Chen
Dr. Feizhou Duan
Dr. Weifang Ma
Dr. Xiaojie Sun
Dr. Yafei Wang
Dr. Zheng Wang
Dr. Yixin Yang
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University of Michigan, Center for Sustainable Systems and the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise
The University of Michigan, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is a public research university with 40,000 graduate and undergraduate students. It has one of the largest research expenditures of any North American university.
The university's involvement in the Alcoa Foundation program focuses on enabling technology for a sustainable energy future. The work of the fellows dovetails with the university's existing research focus on sustainability issues related to the implementation of sustainable energy technologies. These include greenhouse gas emissions and climate change; local and regional pollution, such as sulfur dioxide and smog; declining non-renewable energy resources; markets and policies for supporting alternative energy technologies; and consumer response.
The expected outcomes of the university's involvement in the fellowship program include the creation of new models and approaches for advancing alternative technology, policy recommendations for government and industry, and the training of the fellows and students to become future leaders in the sustainable energy fields.
Addressing the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of current energy sustainability challenges requires interdisciplinary collaborative research. The Alcoa Foundation program brings together faculty expertise and leadership in sustainability from the School of Natural Resources and Environment, the Ross School of Business, the Ford School of Public Policy, and the College of Engineering.
The Center for Sustainable Systems and the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise have more than a decade of experience in leading interdisciplinary research and education on sustainability and are coordinating this postdoctoral fellowship program. In addition, the University of Michigan recently launched the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Energy Institute, which will bring together the university's energy research activities to achieve maximum impact.
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Fellows
Dr. Hilary Grimes-Casey
Dr. Jarod Kelly
Dr. Hyung-Ju Kim
Dr. Geoffrey McD. Lewis
Dr. Chunbo Ma
Dr. Judith L. Walls
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University of São Paulo, Center for Environmental Research and Training
With more than 75,000 students, the University of São Paulo is the largest institution of higher education and research in Brazil and the third largest in Latin America. Its Center for Environmental Research and Training (CEPEMA) is dedicated to environmental research and education.
The Alcoa Foundation Conservation & Sustainability Fellowship Program is one of the cornerstone projects of CEPEMA. As part of the fellowship program, CEPEMA plans to develop strategies for optimizing process efficiency while minimizing environmental impacts, explore environmentally sustainable technologies, and foster multidisciplinary approaches to the modeling of complex environmental systems. In its first two years of operation alone, CEPEMA brought together principle investigators from 11 of the University of São Paulo's academic institutes.
For example, a chemist and biologist are working to genetically modify a strain of bacteria to create a way to treat wastewater at a plant designed by CEPEMA engineers. In another project, a biologist, chemist, engineer, and mathematician will work to identify products that can be produced from palm trees to provide sustainable economic and environmental benefits.
The center is located in Cubatão, a city that has been addressing the impacts arising from its concentration of heavy industrial development for decades. The work of CEPEMA and the Alcoa Foundation fellows is focused on improving the city's environment, developing economic opportunities, and providing social benefits.
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Fellows
Dr. Rita Maria de Brito Alves
Dr. Valquiria Campos
Dr. Valdir Fernandes
Dr. Maria Anita Mendes
Dr. Amauri C. Marcato
Dr. Douglas do Nascimento Silva
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