The Climate & Wildfire Research Initiative
SLAGC’s Climate & Wildfire Research Initiative (CWRI) builds diverse interdisciplinary research coalitions to understand the intricate dynamics that drive wildfires and their impacts on communities in our region to provide decision makers with up-to-date, high-quality, and actionable knowledge to address the growing wildfire crisis.
The CWRI coordinates expertise and contributors with special attention paid to Southern California landscapes, pursuing three main objectives:
- Foster a collaborative research environment, rooted in meaningful engagement of stakeholders, that attracts top researchers from across disciplines to integrate knowledge, tools, and modes of thinking.
- Develop modeling and prediction capabilities for climate and wildfire that will enable solutions-oriented research and inform decision making.
- Involve, inspire, and train the next generation of researchers in transdisciplinary investigation of societally relevant challenges.
Your donation will support CWRI’s continued surveillance of the social and political landscape in order to bring a sympathetic perspective to the development of research agendas and the development of usable science.
To learn more about how you can have a direct impact on CWRI’s critical solution-oriented work, please contact Rachel Scott Foster at rscottfoster@support.ucla.edu, or click below to donate now.
Other SLAGC Giving Opportunities Include:
Investment in Urban Sustainability Research with Real-World and Real-Time Impact
As conveners and facilitators of both internal and external relationships, the SLAGC is uniquely poised to facilitate and create opportunities for interdisciplinary research with immediate real-world impact. Funding for urban sustainability research at UCLA could be directed to specific projects, topic areas or approaches, or more generally to create opportunities for researchers to come together across disciplines and with regional stakeholders to address Los Angeles and global urban sustainability challenges.
Possible programmatic research investments may include:
- Seed grant funding for UCLA faculty to design and execute high-impact urban sustainability research from any discipline, and across disciplines.
- An innovative series of workshops and team building, bringing world-class researchers and societal partners together co-develop research agendas and solutions-oriented research projects to address specific urban sustainability challenges.
- Series of webinars and events to engage the public and raise awareness about sustainability issues through rational, UCLA expert informed messaging.
Urban Sustainability Graduate Student and Postdoc Fellows Program
SLAGC works across all disciplines and has a strong network of partners outside the university, from community based and non-governmental organizations, to local, state, and federal governmental and service organizations.
SLAGC’s Urban Sustainability Graduate Student and Postdoc Fellows are exposed to real-world problem solving and are trained to think critically about socially relevant challenges.
This program gives students vital experience early in their education to develop the tools and master methods of deep collaboration, community engagement, and integrating and mobilizing knowledge to address the complex problems we face as the climate changes.
Undergraduate Research Scholars Program
Launched in 2014, this unique year-long program immerses students from any major across campus in problem-solving and critical thinking coursework and research activities to prepare them to be the next generation of urban sustainability problem solvers.
- Outside of any specific UCLA department or academic unit, the program creates a unique interdisciplinary, multi-major environment for students, and a diverse alumni network of the environmental leaders of tomorrow.
- Students meet weekly in a course with lectures and exercises to enhance understanding of sustainability issues and the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to solving our most pressing urban sustainability challenges.
- Students are matched with an SLAGC-affiliated faculty for a mentored research experience.
- Students work together on interdisciplinary teams in collaboration with an external “client” to address real-world, real-time sustainability problems, with their work having an immediate impact.
- More senior students who are either program alumni or have equivalent experience serve in mentorship and project consultant roles, gaining invaluable leadership skills.
