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The Research & Innovation Office (RIO) today announced the inaugural Sustainability Research Initiative (SRI) Research Fellows cohort. This SRI Research Fellowship will serve as a year-long incubator designed to bring together CU �鶹ӰԺ researchers from across academic units, disciplines and career stages to imagine, collaborate and conduct research in new ways.��

The SRI Research Fellowship is built on a simple premise: when talented people are given the space, time and community to dream big together, transformative ideas emerge. Sustainability challenges are complex and multidimensional, and addressing them requires intellectual approaches that cross boundaries, challenge assumptions and leverage diverse perspectives.��

This fellowship is designed to cultivate exactly that environment. This first cohort of fellows includes 20 researchers from departments and research institutes across campus. Through a series of intensive trainings and retreats, the fellows will spend the year building community, practicing future-oriented thinking, and forming transdisciplinary teams capable of shaping the next generation of sustainability scholarship and solutions.����

“This new fellowship is emblematic of CU �鶹ӰԺ’s strong campuswide commitment to sustainability, and it demonstrates how SRI is elevating and connecting CU’s sustainability researchers in creative and unexpected ways for greater impact,” said CU �鶹ӰԺ Vice Chancellor for Sustainability Andrew Mayock.��

SRI conducted a series of focus groups in the fall of 2025 and a resounding theme emerged: researchers are eager to collaborate across disciplines, but institutional structures make that collaboration challenging.����

“Comments like ‘Where can we think together?’ and ‘Can we buy faculty time for creative thinking?’ underscored the urgency,” said SRI Director Jane Zelikova. “The SRI research fellowship directly responds to these needs by carving out time and space for intentional community building across intellectual and departmental silos and for creative, non-proposal driven conversations. We aim to foster a space where serendipity can seed new ideas and collaborations and where researchers feel supported to explore bold, unconventional approaches.”��

�鶹ӰԺ the SRI Research Fellows program

Through an open application, a committee of sustainability researchers selected fellows based on their demonstrated engagement with sustainability research as well as their expressed interest in expanding their research areas and openness to transdisciplinary collaboration.��

The inaugural cohort is a group of researchers from across STEM fields, social sciences, arts and humanities, design, policy, and other disciplines—bringing together perspectives and experiences from assistant professors, associate professors, full professors and center directors—resulting in a scaffolded model that focuses on innovative ideas rather than publication record or career stage.��

The fellowship functions as an intellectual incubator, providing structure, community and sustained opportunities for collaboration. Key fellowship program elements include cohort-based community building, facilitated workshops and thematic sessions, sustained small-group conversations to seed working groups, time, space, and creative support to develop new research directions and transdisciplinary project proposals that can be seed-funded by SRI, and opportunities to co-organize workshops with SRI on emergent topics. Consecutive cohorts will overlap by 1–2 months to grow community continuity and enable peer learning.��

This, and other opportunities to engage with sustainability research and education, represent continued and expanded investments in CU �鶹ӰԺ sustainability leadership that includes the new SPIKE center for sustainability education.

Applications for the 2027 cohort will be accepted starting in October 2026. If you have questions or would like to find other ways to engage with SRI and sustainability research efforts across campus more broadly, please email zelikova@colorado.edu.����