Research

Pursuing a deeper understanding of sustainability challenges and solutions.

As highlighted in UofL's 2024 Research Strategic Plan, sustainability, social equity, renewable energy, and environmental health & humanities are all major themes of the university's overall research agenda and priorities. The Sustainability Council envisions the University of Louisville as a living laboratory of sustainability. This means that faculty and students from all disciplines have the opportunity to study the environmental, social and economic challenges to sustainability that exist right here on campus and in our community...and to research solutions that make sense here. For an overview of who is involved in our sustainability research efforts, explore the UofL Sustainability Research Inventory 2019-21, 2017-2018, 2012-2015, or 2009-2011.

Dr. Aqlan's C-EEEM Project hosts student researchers studying walkability, stream health & food justice (Speed News, July 20, 2021)

Sam Kessler (junior applied geography - environmental analysis) 2020 water pollution testingUofL students invent new test for water pollution (UofL News, Sept. 21, 2020)

UofL study finds police in schools assess threats differently based on race (UofL News, June 24, 2020)

Joshua Spurgeon. (Photo by Tom Fougerousse)UofL researcher making fuel from water and sunlight wins prestigious NSF award (UofL News, Jan. 22, 2020)




UofL students help turn waste water into beer (UofL News, Sept. 20, 2019)

LouisvilleDataCommons.org home pageUofL’s Envirome Institute creates Louisville Data Commons to support community health research (UofL News, Aug. 13, 2019)

The Phoenix House (Conn Center HQ)UofL researchers say even in Kentucky, there’s a path to a carbon-free future (WFPL, May 20, 2019)

UofL Reseach: Bacteria could be good for plants (UofL News, Jan. 10, 2019)

University of Louisville launches the Envirome Institute with $5M gift (UofL News, June 19, 2018)


UofL researcher wants to clear icy bridges with geothermal heating (UofL News, July 26, 2018)

Transdiciplinary research, employment law, food co-ops merge in UofL professors’ work (UofL News, Dec. 18, 2017)

UofL receives $6.7 million to create Superfund Research CenterUofL receives $6.7 million to become Superfund Research Center (UofL News, Nov. 9, 2017)


UofL Green Heart Project: residents’ inflammation lower after trees added to neighborhoods (UofL News, Aug. 27, 2024)
UofL researchers study whether more trees can improve human health (UofL News, Jan. 4, 2018)
UofL Arbor Day 2017 Tree PlantingDo trees make you healthier? 4 South Louisville neighborhoods are part of an experiment to find out (Courier-Journal, Oct. 26, 2017)
UofL leading study measuring the power of trees as a public health strategy (Oct. 27, 2017)
Green Heart Project logo

UofL Health and Social Justice Scholars launch plans to improve health equity (UofL News, July 3, 2017)

UofL team helps develop safe drinking water tool for those in need (UofL News, May 24, 2017)

UofL’s ‘energy crops’ harvested for research (UofL News, Nov. 1, 2017)
Conn Center plants industrial hemp in quest for renewable energy (UofL News, May 18, 2017)

UofL study examining effects of coal ash exposure on children (UofL News, April 17, 2017)

UofL study: Heat, health risks worsen by 2050 (Courier-Journal, Nov. 14, 2016)

UofL research shows more awareness needed on home environmental exposures that cause lung cancer (UofL News, August 30, 2016)

UofL’s Conn Center exploring industrial hemp (UofL News, Aug. 23, 2016)

Analysis takes a closer look at fair housing (UofL Today, Dec. 22, 2015)

Study to track trees' improvements on health (Courier-Journal, Nov. 28, 2015)

[UofL Study Reveals] 'Ubiquitous' chemicals invade Louisville homes (Courier-Journal, Nov. 13, 2015)

UofL Research Documents the Many Benefits of Making One-Way Streets Two-Way (The Atlantic - CityLab, July 20, 2015)

UofL Startup Works Toward Fueling Profits: Innovation creates cleaner-running diesel (Courier-Journal, Dec. 8, 2014)

New UofL health policy institute to address Kentucky health issues & disparities (UofL Today, Dec. 4, 2014)

Student using solar energy to purify water (UofL Today, Apr. 22, 2014)

Grant will help UofL’s Conn Center for Renewable Energy Research expand (UofL Today, Aug. 27, 2014)

Conn Center - Biofuels

Action plan for Louisville fair housing released by UofL researchers (UofL Today, Feb. 13, 2014)

Sustainability Roundtable

Research Minute - Solar Powered Car

[UofL Researchers and] Urban group want to help cool down Louisville's heat island: A study shows Louisville may be getting hotter at a faster rate than other large U.S. cities (Courier-Journal, May 6, 2012)

Research Minute - Invasive Species

[UofL researchers find] Louisville air is better; concern remains in some neighborhoods. (Courier-Journal, April 21, 2012)

Conn Center: Solar Manufacturing

UofL researchers collaborate with TARC on wheelchair safety

Conn Center technology aids jet biofuel development (UofL Today, Dec. 6, 2011)

Speed lab builds solar energy test building (UofL Today, Aug. 23, 2011)

UofL/UK research may help create inexpensive clean energy (UofL Today, Aug. 31, 2011)

UofL research could improve organization’s ability to foster peace in Northern Ireland (UofL Today, Aug. 19, 2011)

All UofL faculty, staff, and graduate students engaged in research related to sustainability are encouraged to join us for an on-going series of Sustainability Roundtables. We gather throughout the academic year to share research interests, goals, and projects; hear from external experts, practitioners and scholars; have roundtable discussions about sustainability research; and discuss specific sustainability topics of common interest.

The long-term goals of this initiative are to:

  • Develop awareness of sustainability research at UofL;
  • Develop networks of scholars to enhance collaboration and sharing of ideas;
  • Enhance research grant capacity & opportunities through interdisciplinary proposals;
  • Improve & increase sustainability-related research at UofL.

This is a project of the Sustainability Council's Education & Research Committee.

UofL's Sustainability Centers, Institutes & Labs

Many UofL researchers outside of these centers also conduct studies related to sustainability topics. Many of these studies can be identified using our online reference search tool and are listed in our inventory of sustainability research at UofL:

UofL Sustainability Research Incentives

  • Faculty and students interested in researching sustainability are encouraged to apply for UofL's Internal Research Grants.
  • Undergraduate Research Scholar Grant (URS): The primary purpose of a URS is to enrich the research, scholarship and creative arts experience of the undergraduate student by involving the student in research collaboration with a faculty member. The student is expected to become intellectually involved in design and execution of the research project, not just serve as "another pair of hands." The undergraduate student writes the URS proposal after he or she has identified a faculty mentor who is interested in serving as the mentor. The faculty mentor is expected to make arrangements for the student to receive up to three hours of course credit for the research or creative activity and provide a grade for the work completed by the student. Students are encouraged to present a poster, or an equivalent demonstration of the research, on the Undergraduate Research Day. The student may request up to $300 (dry lab/creative activity) or $500 (wet lab) for supplies and expenses required for conducting the research or creative activity. URS proposals may be submitted at any time. They will be reviewed on a monthly basis. The form can be found on the web. Application Form

  • The Commonwealth Center for Humanities and Society Faculty Fellows program is organized around an annual theme that provides the foundation for the academic year's scheduled events and for a Humanities Research Lab, involving a bimonthly colloquium. The theme for the 2020-21 academic year was The Anthropocene, Environment, and Modernity. The theme allowed for a breadth of responses on topics related to the impact of humankind on our environment and to the terms themselves. Theoretical, empirical, historical, sociocultural, and creative approaches to these concepts are all welcome. The Commonwealth Center for Humanities and Society supports up to six CCHS Internal Faculty Fellows around the theme. Fellows are required to be in residence during the academic year, to present one lecture or one workshop on their research, and to participate regularly in the activities and organization of the Humanities Research Lab while completing their own research projects. Fellows play a role in shaping CCHS programming for the academic year, from inviting distinguished guest speakers to finding innovative ways to share scholarship with our arts and culture partners in the community. Fellows receive one course release and a supplemental research/travel stipend from CCHS estimated at $1,500.

  • Community Engagement Faculty Fellows Program  
    The Community Engagement Faculty Fellows Program is a new annual program that launched in 2024-25. It is designed to provide an interdisciplinary team of faculty members the opportunity to develop a deep understanding of community engagement and its related work. The program enables Fellows to participate in and benefit from an interdisciplinary community of scholars. The Community Engagement Faculty Fellows Program is a year-long, faculty development program that enables faculty members to strengthen their community-engaged research skills, develop community-engaged research projects in collaboration with community partners, and produce scholarly products. The Program provides an opportunity for selected faculty members to learn about community-engaged learning and community-engaged research and become recognized campus leaders in community engagement pedagogy. While desired to be a cohort of 3-5 faculty members one each from an academic unit, fellows may vary depending on the scope and capacity of the academic year. Fellows are selected annually through a competitive process. The program is open to all faculty members who have a special interest in community-engaged research. Cohort members work on a number of projects, including community-engaged research projects that addresses critical community issues and potentially have direct benefit to community partners. Fellows may also pursue grant funding for future projects in collaboration with the Office of Community Engagement. The Fellowship is intended to give the faculty member time to work on research and creative work, therefore faculty members receive a course buy-out for the duration of their time as a Fellow. Fellows participate in monthly meetings and professional development, where they explore readings on community engagement. They also participate in the 3-day Community-Based Learning Institute.. Learn more and apply here.
  • The Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research Faculty Research Fund helps sponsor, stimulate and disseminate research relevant to the Louisville community and the U.S. South on social movements, citizen participation, and public policy reforms around racial and social justice. Proposals that engage one or more social justice topics (historical or contemporary) such as race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, environmentalism, disability, and/or age will be given preference. Any faculty member in the College of Arts & Sciences is eligible to apply for a grant of up to $1,000 during a period not to exceed 12 months (this includes term and part-time faculty). Proposals that represent faculty/community or faculty/student collaborations are especially encouraged.
  • Students can also seek funding through the Anne Braden Institute's Social Justice Research Awards. Graduate and undergraduate students from any discipline are asked to engage one or more social justice topics, with a preference given to papers engaging race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, environmentalism, disability, and/or age. The best two undergraduate applications receive $100 each, while the best graduate application receives $300.
  • The Summer Research Opportunity Program provides UofL undergraduate students (preferably juniors or sophomores) who would like to know more about graduate-level education at the university, with a 10-week research-intensive experience in a department that offers graduate degrees. Mentors will provide students with individualized research projects. All UofL departments with graduate programs will be supported. Students will receive a stipend of $3,500 for the 10 weeks and the mentor is eligible for up to $500 to support the student's research and costs for production of the poster that is required.
  • The Ali Scholars Program, offered by the Muhammad Ali Institute for Peace and Justice to full-time undergraduate UofL students, is a unique 2-year experience combining training, research and service in the areas of violence prevention and peace building in an urban living context. A special emphasis is placed on understanding and addressing the social conditions that impact those issues. Scholars will receive a $500 scholarship each semester, for a total program scholarship of $2,000.
  • Conn Center Fellows: Want to be involved in advances in renewable energy? The Leigh Ann Conn Fellows Program is for grads & undergrads planning to conduct energy-related research. Areas include Solar Decathlon, Solar Manufacturing R&D, Biofuels/Biomass R&D, and Materials Discovery/Manufacturing. Full info and application details here.
  • UofL faculty and students are encouraged to apply for grants through theU.S. Environmental Protection Agency's People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) program: The EPA offers annual research grants to U.S. colleges and universities to engage students in projects to solve our world's most serious environmental challenges. Through its P3 program, students working on teams design sustainability solutions and compete for more funding to take their ideas from the lab to the real world. EPA's P3 program fosters team-based learning, interdisciplinary effort and class-to-real-world experience.

PAST OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Environmental Health Research Pilot Projects: The UofL Center for Integrative Environmental Health Sciences (CIEHS) offers funds to support pilot projects for environmental health research. Pilot projects are funded through a NIEHS P30 Environmental Health Sciences Core Center grant to the CIEHS. The Pilot Project Program and types of awards are described here. The due date for full proposals was Feb. 4, 2022. For more information, please contact CIEHS.
  • Cooperative Consortium for Transdisciplinary Social Justice Research: As part of the University of the 21st Century Initiative, UofL allocated $250,000 per year for three years (2017-2019) to support this new Consortium to fund the creation or expansion of transdisciplinary social justice research teams, projects, creative activities, and community-engaged scholarship for faculty and students at UofL. Each year the Consortium awarded up to 27 Faculty Research Fellowships, and at least one PhD-level Graduate Student Research Assistantship for the calendar year. The Consortium also assigned 8 graduate and professional Graduate Fellowships to transdisciplinary research teams, and assigned a minimum of 7 Undergraduate Research Fellowships to advance social justice transdisciplinary research (TDR) activities.
    Social justice TDR stretches past traditional academic multi-disciplinarity or inter-professionalism to foster collaborations across disciplines, colleges, and beyond academia to develop humanistically-infused processes for identifying new solutions to complex, intransigent social problems.
    Social Justice Areas of Focus for Funding:
    a. Community Justice: emphasizes issues of housing justice and restorative justice (including
    school-to-prison pipeline, mass criminalization);
    b. Environmental Justice;
    c. Emerging Social Justice Issues - providing an opportunity to respond to current social
    justice issues arising locally, nationally, or globally, such as and including health equity;
    d. Social Justice in West Louisville.
    Faculty Fellowship Grants Available:
    1. Faculty Workload Fellowships: Provides a course or clinical replacement for one semester at a PTL/adjunct level to support new research and/or research project completion. Up to 13 available annually.
    2. Mini-Grant Faculty Fellowships: Provided a research grant for transdisciplinary group project proposals in an amount up to $2,500 to support new research and/or research project completion. Up to 8 mini-grant faculty fellowships awarded annually.
    3. Grant Fellowships: Provided a research grant for transdisciplinary group project proposals in an amount up to $7,500 to support new research and/or research project completion. Up to 9 large grant faculty fellowships awarded annually.
    4. Grants and mini-grants were available according to the following schedule: Up to 7 one-year grants, non-renewable; up to 10 renewable grants (assuming iRFP funding is renewed), both 2-year and 3-year.
    View the call for proposals. For more information, contact co-PI’s Prof. Enid Trucios-Haynes at ethaynes@louisville.edu or Prof. Cate Fosl at cfosl@louisville.edu.
  • KREC Competitive Grants Program (FY2008-2011)
    The Kentucky Renewable Energy Consortium (KREC), administered by the Kentucky Pollution Prevention Center (KPPC) at UofL's J.B. Speed School of Engineering, encouraged faculty research through the Competitive Grants Program. KREC advanced and funded innovative research on renewable energy and energy efficiency that focuses on developing resource-responsible technologies and practices for the energy sector. A total of $864,000 was awarded to seven recipients in the latest round of grants.

Campus as a Living Lab of Sustainability

In our efforts to make UofL into a living laboratory of sustainability, the Council seeks researchers and faculty collaborators from all disciplines to work directly with us and to sponsor students (GRAs, interns, work-study, service learning, class projects, volunteers, etc.) to help us investigate ways to improve and enhance sustainability. UofL has many concrete sustainability research needs, including the following vital efforts:

Learn more and see examples on our Campus As A Living Lab webpage.

Technology Transfer

UofL researchers generate sustainability-related innovations which could have a wide variety of applications in the commercial and public sector. Our Office of Technology Transfer facilitates the commercialization of these innovations and supports University research by tailoring collaborative arrangements to fit particular commercialization and research needs. The Office promotes education, research, knowledge dissemination, innovation and entrepreneurship.

New innovations are being generated all the time, but what follows is a sample of UofL's Energy, Clean-tech & Environmental Technologies available for Tech Transfer from November 1st, 2016:
• Non-Transition Metal Electrocatalysts for Hydrogen Evolution and Hydrogen Oxidation Reactions (16082)
• Process for Production of Hydrogen Fuel from Solar Power (16038)
• Process for Isolating C5 Sugars from Biomass Hydrolyzate (15015)
• Catalytic Isomerization of Linear Olefinic Hydrocarbons (11060)
• Innovative Fabrication of Carbon Nanocages (15082)
• Single-step Process for Production of Branched, Cyclic and Aromatic Hydrocarbons from Fatty Acids (14010 & 14044)
• Autonomous, Calibration-less, Remote, Electrochemical Detection of Metals in Water and Other Liquids (15058)
• Photoelectrochemical Cell with Ga(SBX)N1-X Semiconductor Electrode (12014)
• Species-Specific Primer Sets and Identifications of Species-Specific DNA Sequences Using Genome Fragment Enrichment (06022)
• Electrochemical Removal of Dissolved Oxygen from Sample Streams (14066)
• Chemical Sensors for Detecting Hydrogen and Volatile Organic Compounds (07073)