The David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future invites proposals for the Academic Venture Fund (AVF) program.

This fund stimulates innovative, impactful, interdisciplinary research in sustainability at Cornell. The Academic Venture Fund helps form interdisciplinary teams of Cornell scholars and where appropriate, connect these teams with external partners. The proposed research must show promise for securing future external funding and/or sustained future activity through adoption and implementation. Successful proposals will advance sustainability locally, regionally, nationally, or internationally. The AVF is intended to support proposals that would not be funded by traditional granting organizations because the proposed activity is interdisciplinary, still early in development, high risk, or some combination of these factors.

We seek proposals in the following areas:

• Across the entire range of our sustainability themes and focus areas, as in previous calls.
• In public health, with a One Health/Planetary Health theme. As a supplement to the traditional AVF program, and in conjunction with Cornell’s new Master of Public Health program, we have received funding to support additional select proposals in our One Health/Planetary Health (OH/PH) focus area that have an explicit connection with human health. OH/PH describes the various linkages between the health of humans, animals, and the environment. Human behaviors, demographic dynamics, and economic conditions are often important drivers of OH/PH relationships. A OH/PH approach is inherently multidisciplinary, improving our ability to understand and design interventions that incorporate these linkages.

All AVF proposals must:

• Demonstrate clear impact or paths to impact beyond Cornell
• Demonstrate a strong interdisciplinary team approach to the project

In 2016, AVF awarded 14 projects and a total of $1.5 million in cross-disciplinary research to seed new approaches to some of the world’s greatest sustainability challenges.

To learn more about applying to this opportunity and about prior work that has been done through AVF, please visit the ACSF website and review the ACSF AVF Request for Proposals 2017 guidelines.

Letters of Intent are due on February 20, 2017 and Proposals are due March 20, 2017. We strongly encourage proposers to contact members of the Atkinson Center Leadership Team to discuss their ideas prior to submitting an AVF proposal. We can help to strengthen proposals by addressing AVF program goals and identifying additional potential collaborators or partnerships.