NSF invests in use-inspired climate change and clean energy research

The U.S. National Science Foundation announces 13 new Partnerships for International Research and Education, PIRE, awards totaling more than $19 million. The PIRE competition focuses on global societal challenges related to climate change and clean energy.

PIRE awards are visionary, ambitious, interdisciplinary, use-inspired research projects that require international collaboration. The primary goal of the program is to support high-caliber research proposals that show a clear potential for rapid scale-up and growth. Going well beyond a traditional collaboration among academic labs, one of the requirements for the proposals was to build multi-stakeholder partnerships. This resulted in an impressive set of foreign and domestic industries, local governments, banks and international organizations partnering with U.S. universities on PIRE projects.

“We are thrilled with the quality of submitted proposals and it was a difficult job to select only 13 projects to make awards. We look forward to the great work these project teams will accomplish and expect that they become international hubs for research in clean energy and climate change,” said Fahmida Chowdhury and Maija Kukla, program directors in NSF’s Office of International Science and Engineering.

The 13 funded PIRE projects are listed below:

• Building Decarbonization via AI-empowered District Heat Pump Systems: Texas A&M University
• International Partnerships for Accelerating Climate-Ready, Sustainable, and Clean Urban Transportation: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Climate Resilient Sustainable Food Production: Controlled Environment Hydroponic Agriculture With Novel Wastewater Treatment & Reuse: Clemson University
• Center of All-Solid-State Batteries for a Clean Energy Society: Illinois Institute of Technology
• US-Japan Partnership in Excitonic Soft Materials for Clean Energy: University of Vermont
• Multi-Domain, Multi-Scale, Policy-Aware Digital Twin for Offshore Wind Energy Infrastructure: Tufts University
• Climate Risk, Pollution, and Childhood Inequalities in Low- and Middle-income Countries: University of Pennsylvania
• Co-Creating Research and Education Capacities to Understand, Visualize and Mitigate Climate-Change Impact Cascades and Inequities in Central Mexico: Clark University
• JUNCTION, Japan-US Network for Clean Energy Technologies Involving Oriented Nanotubes: Rice University
• Deeply Decarbonizing Global Industrial Supply Chains: Technology, Organizational Practices, and Institutional Design: Carnegie Mellon University
• Technologies for One Water in Extremely Resilient-buildings (TOWER): University at Buffalo
• Advancing International Partnerships in Research for Decoupling Concrete Manufacturing and Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions: The University of Texas at Arlington
• Four Networks for Geologic Hydrogen Storage: University of California, Berkeley

NSF has a long history of fostering and supporting international relationships to address critical science and engineering questions. Since its inception in 2005, the PIRE program has accelerated scientific discovery and contributed to the U.S. science and technology workforce.

More information about the PIRE program and a full list of awards made in Fiscal Year 2022 can be found at nsf.gov.

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