Ivan Allen College Teams Win EVPR Seed Grants
Posted August 17, 2021
Two teams led by Ivan Allen College researchers won Seed Grant funding from the office of the Executive Vice President for Research.
A transdisciplinary team led by Brian Woodall and Mariel Borowitz of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs received funding to further their research into megaregion sustainability. Another team led by Laura Taylor, professor, and chair in the School of Economics, received a grant to focus on the health effects of air pollution.
The megaregions project will build on previous work done by the team to understand what will be needed to ensure the sustainability of U.S. megaregions against potential climate change-related disasters.
“The overarching aim of this research is to work in partnership with both researchers and practitioners to derive general principles for identifying and reducing existing vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure that will bolster regional resilience and prosperity, thus preserving the social-ecological-built assets of these urban-rural regions,” they wrote in their project proposal.
The team includes researchers with expertise in sustainable development, satellite data analysis, transportation and infrastructure engineering, remote sensing and information technology, econometrics, energy and food security, community partnership-building, and U.S., Japanese, and European affairs. In addition to Woodall, Borowitz, Alasdair Young of the Nunn School, and Shatakshee Dhongde of the School of Economics, the team includes faculty from the College of Engineering and the College of Computing.
Taylor’s project, “The Health Effects of Air Pollution: An Interdisciplinary Research Program,” draws on expertise from across the Institute with co-investigators Dylan Brewer, assistant professor of economics; Michael Chang, the deputy director of the Brooks Byers Institute of Sustainable Systems; and Randall Guensler, Michael Rodgers, and Ted Russell in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Their research seeks to understand better how air pollution affects birth outcomes such as preterm birth, birth weight, and the presence of congenital disabilities. The goal is to help craft policies to improve those outcomes, especially in disadvantaged communities unequally exposed to pollution. By comparing data from areas that experienced decreased air pollution during the Covid-19 pandemic with those that did not, the researchers found a unique opportunity to isolate the impact of air pollution from other factors like low income.
“When it comes to understanding the impacts of environmental stressors, identifying a natural experiment such as Covid-19 is critical,” said Brewer. “I’m looking forward to contributing not just to the conversation around air pollution but to the development of real, practical solutions to the problem as well.”
