Solution Areas

The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability draws on a deep understanding of Earth, climate, and society to create knowledge and scalable solutions for our world’s most significant and complex problems.

Based on extensive faculty input and an assessment of where Stanford can make the most meaningful impact, the school has selected eight interconnected Solution Areas to focus our research efforts over the next decade. Coordination and resources in these areas will amplify the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability’s ability to inform key decision makers and translate our research into large-scale solutions for a sustainable future.

Water

Risk, resilience,
and adaptation

Platforms and tools
for monitoring
and decision making

How we work

Future work and investments in these areas will emphasize partnerships with communities and organizations beyond Stanford and a need to understand how different projects, problems, and solutions interact and influence one another.

The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability will drive progress in our eight Solution Areas through two mechanisms:

Integrative Projects

A new set of research projects will be organized around decade-long research themes and dedicated to creating solutions through interdisciplinary research, engagement with partners beyond Stanford, identifying significant knowledge gaps, and understanding systems.

Key organizations: Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Precourt Institute for Energy, and the planned Sustainable Societies Institute

Flagship Destinations

Flagship Destinations are defined targets for the pace and scale of work to address challenges facing Earth, climate, and society. By working backward from these targets in consultation with faculty and external experts, this initiative seeks to rapidly translate Stanford research into policy and technology solutions for sustainability. Projects are intended to help verify and demonstrate that well-studied solutions can succeed at large scale so they can be launched out of Stanford and implemented for the benefit of humanity and our planet.

Key organization: Sustainability Accelerator

Next steps

Teams of faculty and external experts with relevant expertise will develop research strategies for each Solution Area on a rolling basis.

In August 2024, the Sustainability Accelerator outlined new Flagship Destinations and posted a request for proposals (RFPs) in the areas of climate adaptation and planetary intelligence. A schedule of workshops and RFPs for Integrative Projects will be released early in Fall 2024.