Knowledge into Action

The Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy have a long track record of catalyzing highly effective collaborations across the university.

In the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, the university is expanding and building on the successful work of these institutes, as well as adding a new Institute for Sustainable Societies, to enhance opportunities for collaboration with policy makers, thought leaders, and industry partners. 

The institutes will be home to a set of inaugural initiatives, which will leverage their strengths as hubs for teaching, research, and engagement around specific challenge areas. The initiatives will bring together people from departments inside and outside the school to tackle important challenges facing the planet. They will advance collaborative and interdisciplinary research, engage with external partners to co-produce new policies and scalable solutions, and create cross-cutting curricula to provide students with the skills they need to confront complex problems.

Gift Opportunities 

• Institute Directors' Discretionary Funds may be allocated toward an institute’s most urgent needs and emerging opportunities by its director. 
• Research Grants* support early- and mid-stage research with special promise for impact in key challenge areas.
• Initiative gift opportunities include professorships, graduate fellowships, and research grants focused on each challenge area.

*Some research grant gift opportunities are eligible for 1:1 matching through the Sustainability Matching Program.

Banner photo at top of page: Professor Dustin Schroeder and students in Stanford's David Rumsey Map Center. Photo by Stacy Geiken.