Nano- and microplastics are showing up everywhere — in our oceans, our food, our own bodies. Now, thanks to a major new grant, Rhode Island scientists are teaming up to understand what these pollutants mean for ecosystems and communities.
Institute at Brown for Environment and Society
Date
October 28, 2025
Modeling microplastics: Brown’s role in a $7M coastal initiative
IBES Fellow Baylor Fox-Kemper is the leading Brown faculty member involved in SIMCoast, an NSF initiative to track how microplastics move from land to sea and explore what this means for ecosystems, climate, and communities.
Collaborating across the state
IBES Fellow Baylor Fox-Kemper, a professor in the Department of Earth, Environment, and Planetary Sciences (DEEPS) and co-director of the Equitable Climate Futures initiative, is Brown’s faculty lead in SIMCoast, a $7 million project funded by the National Science Foundation that brings together URI, Brown, Rhode Island College, and Roger Williams University to take on one of today’s most pervasive environmental challenges.
“SIMCoast is just getting started,” Fox-Kemper said. “Our group’s overall goal is to model the transport and fate of nano- and microplastics, and predict their physical, ecological, and societal impacts in present and future climates.” Other groups involved in the project will work on measuring nano- and microplastics throughout the region, improving measurement techniques, working with community partners, government, and industry to understand their concerns and needs, and tracking and modeling the flow of plastics through the food web.
Fostering tools and talent
At Brown, the project will fund a graduate student and postdoctoral associate, as well as undergraduate researchers through URI’s SURF program. Fox-Kemper is joined by IBES faculty affiliates Mara Freilich (DEEPS and Applied Mathematics), Karianne Bergen (DEEPS, Data Science, and Computer Science), and Emanuele Di Lorenzo (DEEPS). Together, they’ll build new tools to help the state, and the nation, get a clearer picture of how microplastics move through watersheds and oceans.
For Fox-Kemper, the challenge is as much about maximizing efficiency as it is about cutting-edge science.
“We’re testing how machine learning can extend predicted variables, and how an optimized observing system can detect a significantly higher fraction of these particles,” he explained. “It’s about building the best possible system to understand and respond to what’s happening in real time.”
SIMCoast also trains the next generation. By supporting graduate students, postdocs, and undergraduate students, the initiative will strengthen Rhode Island’s role as a hub for coastal and environmental research.
For Brown, SIMCoast represents an opportunity to lead at the intersection of modeling and applied environmental science. The project complements many of IBES’s ongoing research threads — in climate impacts, coupled Earth systems modeling, and socio-environmental resilience — while enabling new collaboration across Rhode Island institutions.