Across seven projects, IBES faculty researchers are taking environmental research beyond campus and into the field, working alongside communities while opening new doors for undergraduates to participate.
IBES has awarded 2026 Catalyst Research Awards to seven faculty-led projects tackling environmental challenges in new ways. And this year, that investment extends even more directly to students: five of the seven projects are supported through IBES’s new Student Transformative Engagement Pathways (STEP) program, creating opportunities for undergraduates to build skills, contribute to consequential research, and learn alongside faculty and community partners.
Bathsheba Demuth will explore whether legal personhood could offer a new approach to protecting the Yukon River, where steep declines in salmon populations are threatening ecosystems and the Indigenous communities that have long depended on them.
Dev Patel will investigate a deceptively simple challenge facing nature-based climate solutions: once trees are planted, what will help communities keep them alive?
“ Planting a tree is only the first step—the climate benefits depend on whether that tree survives. We want to understand how climate programs can work with communities to create incentives that are fair, locally meaningful, and ultimately make these investments more successful over the long term. ”
Mara Freilich will work with an interdisciplinary team of Brown researchers and Providence community partners to create a hub for community-engaged watershed research centered on undergraduate participation.
J. Timmons Roberts will support undergraduate climate policy research through Brown’s Climate and Development Lab, where students investigate barriers to ambitious and equitable climate action in the United States.
“ There’s no substitute for putting students in the rooms where climate policy is actually being discussed and debated. They’ll have the opportunity to test their research with people doing this work every day and to begin seeing themselves as people who can contribute to those conversations. ”
Meredith Hastings will expand undergraduate research opportunities through Breathe Providence, a community-scale air pollution monitoring initiative she launched in 2022.
“ Breathe Providence is about making air quality research responsive and accessible to the people breathing that air every day. Bringing undergraduates more deeply into that work gives them the chance to see how scientific research can be deeply driven by community priorities and contribute to meaningful change. ”
Eleanor Caves will expand Brown University Discovery in Diving (BUDDi), a program designed to make marine research training more accessible to undergraduates.
Eben “Blake” Hodgin, Daniel Ibarra and Brad Marston will develop a field-based soil research and education program that gives Brown undergraduates hands-on training in soil science across southern New England.