Funding History
Learn about TRIF-WEES funding support via the University of Arizona Research Advancement Grants and Faculty Hiring
On February 1, 2021, the Arizona Institutes for Resilience (AIR) awarded Resilience Grants totaling $823,101 to 13 teams representing six UArizona colleges and 14 departments or units. The grants are funded by the Technology and Research Initiative Fund (TRIF), administered by the Office of Research, Innovation & Impact and AIR and supported by a small portion of Arizona sales tax revenues.
See below for a full list of funded projects.
Co-Locating Agriculture and Renewable Energy Production to Create Resilient Food, Energy, and Water Systems in Arizona
- Lead PI: Greg Barron-Gafford
- Co-PI(s): Andrea Gerlak, William Holmgren
Building Resilience in Southern Arizona’s Local Food System
- Lead PI: Laurel Bellante
- Co-PI(s): Gigi Owen
Developing biological solutions for Arizona dust hazards
- Lead PI: Joseph Blankinship
- Co-PI(s): Alicja Babst-Kostecka, Albert Barberan, Jason Field, Elise Gornish, Craig Rasmussen, A. Eduardo Saez, Malak Tfaily
Southwest Field Studies in Writing
- Lead PI: Susan Briante
- Co-PI(s): Francisco Cantu, Caleb Weaver
Indigenous resilience: Co-designing and deploying off-grid household solar nanofiltration water systems for remote Navajo communities
- Lead PI: Karletta Chief
- Co-PI(s): Vasiliki Karanikola, Andrew Curley, Robert Arnold, Torran Anderson, Kern Collymore, Janene Yazzie, Tommy Rock
Development of Injectable High-Affinity Polymers as a Green Technology for In-Situ Removal of PFAS from Contaminated Arizona Groundwaters
- Lead PI: Jon Chorover
- Co-PI(s): Leif Abrel, Reyes Sierra-Alvarez, Jim Field, James Hatton, Matt Narter
Refining short-term forecasts to effectively manage buffelgrass in Arizona
- Lead PI: Theresa Crimmins
- Co-PI(s): Ben McMahan, Erin Posthumus, Alyss Rosemartin, Michael Crimmins
Building Resilience: A University-Community Partnership to Develop a Green Stormwater Infrastructure Maintenance Protocol for Tucson, Arizona
- Lead PI: Andrea K. Gerlak
- Co-PI(s): Blue Baldwin, Greg Barron-Gafford, Parker Filer, Neha Gupta, Karen Hanshaw, James Macadam, Season Martin, Grant McCormick, Amy McCoy, Thomas Meixner, Tanya Quist, Bo Yang, Adrianna Zuniga-Teran
Facilitating Community Workshops to Identify Priorities for an Equitable Climate Action and Adaptation Plan for the City of Tucson
- Lead PI: Katharine Jacobs
- Co-PI(s): Neha Gupta, Fatima Luna, Amelia Marsh
Impacts of successive wildfires on the ecologic, hydrologic and geomorphic resiliency of the Sky Islands
- Lead PI: Luke McGuire
- Co-PI(s): Don Falk, Craig Rasmussen, Ann Youberg
Proof of Concept: Using DNA Barcodes to Identify Arizona's Insects of Importance to Agriculture, Natural Areas, and Human Health
- Lead PI: Wendy Moore
- Collaborators: Peter Ellsworth (APMC), Martha Hunter, John Palumbo, Bruce Tabashnik, Jason Botz, M. Kathryn Busby
Planting a Resilient Food Future
- Lead PI: Gary Nabhan
- Co-PI(s): Erin Riordan, Parker Filer
Assessing Resilience of Arizona Grassland to Changes in the North American Monsoon: Fewer, Larger Rainfall Events with Longer-Duration Drought Intervals
- Lead PI: Yang Song
- Co-PI(s): Joel Beiderman (SW Watershed Research Center), William Smith
Salary and Startup
| Faculty | Department |
|---|---|
| Andrea Achilli | CHEE |
| Alicja Babst-Kostecka | SWES |
| Albert Barberan | SWES |
| Bryan Black | LTRR |
| Paul Carini | SWES |
| Laura Lotter Condon | HAS |
| Riley Duran | AZ Space |
| Thomas Evans | SGD |
| Bo Guo | HAS |
| Jia Hu | SNRE |
| Jin Hongyue | SIE |
| Vasiliki Karanikola | CHEE |
| Adam Printz | CHEE |
| Kaustubh Thirumalai | GEOS |
| Jesse Woodson | PLANT |
FY20 Highlights
- UArizona has been ranked No. 1 in the U.S. and No. 2 globally in the area of water resources in the 2020 Academic Ranking of World Universities by academic subjects
- 159 graduate students, 140 undergraduate students, and 35 post-docs enabled through assistantships, wages, scholarships, grants and research experiences
- TRIF funds supported three startups: Auxilium Technology Group, SaiOx, Inc. and Throohealth.
Equipment Grants
| Grant | Department |
|---|---|
| New Horizons in Chemical and Electronic Surface Analysis | CBC |
| Acquire Sontek IQ Plus Flowmeter | CAEM |
| Fluorescence Spectrophotometer for ALEC | ENVS |
| Ellipsometer Instrumentation to Develop Energy Efficient Water Purification Membranes and Other Thin Film Materials and Devices | CHEE |
| Ensuring Water, Food Safety, and Public Health Using the Compact Illumina iSeq100 System | ENVS |
| Advanced Tensiometer System for Characterizing the Environmental Fate of Emerging Contaminants and Surfactant-Enhanced Remediation Processes | ENVS |
| Passive Solar Dryer to Repurpose Food Waste | ENTO |
| Acquisition of a Thermogravimetric Analyzer for High Throughput Materials Characterization | CBC |
| CEREUS: Cyberinfrastructure for Environmental Research & Education with Unoccupied Systems | BIO5 |
Research Grants
| Grant | Department |
|---|---|
| NSF Critical Zone Observatory Proposal: Support for Workshop and Proposal Development | HAS |
| Internet of Things Based Pipeline Structural Health Monitoring | SIE |
| Preliminary Subsurface Investigations of the Bouse Formation, Western AZ: A unique paleoenvironmental archive of Colorado River history and opportunity for Native American STEM training | GEOS |
| High Efficiency IR Emitter Thin Films for Integrated Spectroscopic Sensing | MSE |
| Viromic analysis of reverse osmosis concentrates treated through ozone-biofiltration for safe reuse in irrigation: A novel approach for zero liquid discharge | SWES |
Salary and Startup
| Faculty | Department |
|---|---|
| Andrea Achilli |
CHEE, COE |
| Albert Barberan | SWES |
| Bryan Black | LTRR |
| Paul Carini | SWES |
| Laura Condon | HAS |
| Thomas Evans | SGD |
| Bo Guo | HAS |
| John Holt | LPL |
| Jia Hu | SNRE |
| Jin Hongyue | SIE |
| Vasiliki Karanikola | CHEE |
| Kaustubh Thirumalai | GEOS |
| Adam Printz | CHEE |
| Jesse Woodson | PLANT |
FY19 Highlights
- $39.7 M in new grants, gifts and other sources to the UA from WEES investments in faculty and research
- 182 graduate students, 123 undergraduate students, and 55 post-docs enabled through assistantships, wages, scholarships, grants and research experiences
- 12 new invention disclosures, X patent applications filed, 0 new patents issued and 4 licenses and options
- Three Accelerate for Success Research Advancement grants were awarded to enhance cloud-based data storage sustainability, performance, energy efficiency and materials reuse; evaluate arid soil microbiome productivity and carbon uptake; and understand wildfire-induced changes to soils and vegetation.
Equipment Grants
| Grant | Department |
|---|---|
| B2 Coral Reef Biome | GEOS |
| Ambient Air VOC Analyzer | HAS, CEP, CHEE |
| System for simulating air quality levels | OPTIC, CEP, BME |
| Meteorological Network and Paleo Research Infrastructure | DL, EEB, LTRR |
| ESRAC laboratory enhancements | CEP |
| UAS-based Integrated LiDAR-Hyperspectral Infrastructure | SNRE, GEOS, PLANT |
| Environmental Monitoring "Maker Space" | CAPLA, SGD, CAPLA |
| Time-resolved/step-scan FTIR | CBC, MSE, CHEE |
| Lyophilization and Refrigeration Equipment | CAPLA, MSE |
| Total Stations and Global Positioning Stations | BARA, ANTHRO |
| Ultra-High Performance Liquid Chromatography System | HAS, CEP, CHEE |
| Meteorological Network and Paleo Research Infrastructure | LTRR, EEB, DL |
| Ion Chromatography and Solid Phase Extraction | CHEE, ALEC, SWES |
| Drone-mounted LiDAR Sensor | YAC, YCEDA |
| Sterilization Capacity Biosystem | PLANT |
| Fluorescent measurments, global carbon/water | IE |
| WW Chromotography | CEP |
| Isoprime precisION Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometer | LTRR, PHYS |
Research Grants
| Grant | Department |
|---|---|
| Sustainable Growth of the Cloud | OPTIC, CAPLA, CHEE |
| Polymer/Ionic Liquid Interfaces for Energy Storage | SWES, ALEC |
| From source to sink: identifying hot spots for debris flow hazards and soil carbon sequestration following wildfire | GEOS |
| The Arid Soil Microbiome: Connecting Functional Health to Phylogenetic Diversity | SWES |
| Detection of waterborne adenoviruses by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry-based magnetic immunoassay with gold nanoparticles labeling | SNRE |
| New Technologies for safe, effective, and informative wildlife surveys | MSE |
Salary and Startup
| FACULTY | Department |
|---|---|
| Paul Carini | SWES |
| Hongyue Jin | COE |
| Albert Barberan | SWES |
| Andrea Achilli | CHEE |
| Jesse Woodson | PLANT |
| Tom Evans | SGD |
| Bo Guo | HAS |
| Adam Printz | CHEE |
| Laura Condon | HAS |
| Bryan Black | LTRR |
| Jia Hu | SNRE |
FY18 Highlights
- $66M in new grants, gifts and other sources to the UA from WEES investments in faculty and research
- 175 graduate students, 109 undergraduate students, and 29 post-docs enabled through assistantships, wages, scholarships, grants, and research experiences
- 16 new invention disclosures, 9 patent applications filed, 1 new patent issued, and 2 licenses and option
- Nine Research Advancement and 16 Equipment grants, including:
- Interdisciplinary Link and Industry Engagement awards that advance research on conductive plastics, membrane technology and enhanced organic solar cells.
- Accelerate for Success awards that explore alternatives to chemical pesticides and fund research on agrivoltaics, mycoculture and soil ecosystem genomics
- Equipment grants that supported research on global water and carbon cycles, emerging contaminants, environmental monitoring, air quality and more
Equipment Grants
| GRant | Department |
|---|---|
| WW Chromotography | CEP |
| Fluorescent measurments, global carbon/water | IE |
| Sterilization Capacity Biosystem | PLANT |
| B2 Coral Reef Biome | GEOS |
| Drone-mounted LiDAR Sensor | YCEDA, YAC |
| Ion Chromatography and Solid Phase Extraction | SWES, ALEC, CHEE |
| Environmental Monitoring "Maker Space" | CAPLA, SGD, CAPLA |
| Ultra-High Performance Liquid Chromatography System | EEB, ANTHRO |
| Isoprime precisION Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometer | PHYS, LTRR |
| Total Stations and Global Positioning Stations | ANTHRO, BARA |
| Lyophilization and Refrigeration Equipment | CAPLA, MSE |
| Time-resolved/step-scan FTIR | CBC, MSE, CHEE |
| UAS-based Integrated LiDAR-Hyperspectral Instrument | SNRE, GEOS, PLANT |
| ESRAC laboratory enhancements | CEP, |
| Meteorological Network and Paleo Research Infrastructure | DL, EEB, LTRR |
| System for simulating air quality levels - verified that this does not duplicate Sorooshian's wide-array aerosol generator. | OPTIC, CEP, BME |
| Ambient Air VOC Analyzer. Completing the analysis using PDEQ’s existing ozone and NOx monitors. | HAS, CEP, CHEE |
Research Grants
| Grant | Department |
|---|---|
| Enhanced Performance of Organic Solar Cells: Singlet Fission | PHYS |
| Revisioning landscape evolution: The role of pore-scale microbial life in landscape-scale hydro-bio-geochemical processes. | HAS |
| Advancing mycoculture for enhanced nutritional and nutraceutical resources | PLANT |
| Creating High-Conductivity Plastic Electrodes for Ultralight-Weight Electronics | MSE, ECE |
| Ceramic Membrane and Ozone for Water Reuse: Synergy for Fouling Control and Organic Contaminant Oxidation |
CHEE |
| Holographic Switch for Data Center | OPTIC |
| Soil ecosystem genomics: novel methods to link microbial genes, communities, and function in the face of soil system complexity | SNRE, EEB, B2 |
| Dryland Agrivoltaics: A Novel Ecosystems Approach to the Food-Water-Energy Nexus | SGD, AREC, ALEC |
| Bioprospecting of secondary metabolites from Photorhabdus bacteria and their application in pest management | SNRE, ENT |
Salary and Startup
| Faculty | Department |
|---|---|
| Albert Barberan | SWES |
| Paul Carini | SWES |
| Adrian Achilli | CHEE |
| Jesse Woodson |
SBS |
| Jia Hu | SNRE |
| Tom Evans | SGD |
FY17 Highlights
- $35M in new grants and gifts to the UA from WEES investments in faculty and research
- 152 graduate students, 74 undergraduate students, and 16 post-docs enabled through assistantships, wages, scholarships, grants, and research experiences
- 18 new invention disclosures, 22 patent applications filed, 3 new patent issued, and 4 license and option
- 12 pilot/seed grants that supported catalytic early-stage research, including:
- Food-energy-water nexus research to design and scale-up Agrivoltaic ecosystems that integrate solar, water harvesting, and warm season fool and herb crops.
- Collaborative teams, involving hydrologists, microbiologists, and chemists, to evaluate the fundamental earth processes of geobiological weathering, carbon cycling dynamics, and landscape stability.
- Advancements in solar technology by researching and developing bi-facial solar cells to capture and convert sunlight on both front and back surfaces; offering new mounting and application possibilities.
- Development of superporous electroactive hydrogels, needed for self-cooling building materials that reduce energy consumption and water use in hot, arid environments.
Equipment Grants
| Grants | Department |
|---|---|
| Purchase of an Agilent 8900 inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer | SWES, B2, CHEE |
| Augmentation of Advanced Measurement Equipment for Arid Lands Water Management | YCE, CE, SWES |
| Enhancing the Biosphere2 Ground-based Remote Sensing System | B2, HAS, CHEE |
| Quantitative Materials Imaging and Characterization by Cathodoluminescence Spectroscopy | GEOS, MGE |
| Constraining Carbon Cycling at the Landscape Evolution Observatory using a Novel Tracer for Plant and Microbial Activity | SNRE, B2, EEB |
| Acquisition of a Dual Tube Furnace for Growth of 2D Transition Metal Dichalcogenides | CBC |
| Water Treatment Equipment for the Biosphere 2 Ocean: Revitalizing the "Desert Sea" Research Platform | GEOS, B2 |
Research Grants
| Grant | Department |
|---|---|
| Desert Agrivoltaics: A Novel Ecosystems Approach to the Food-Water-Energy Nexus | SGD, PHYS |
|
Accelerate for Success: Biosphere 2 |
B2 |
| Influence of Jet Stream Variability on North American Plant Phenology | LTRR, SNRE |
| Building Integrated Hydrogels for Self-Cooling and Closed-Loop Water Processes | MSE, CAPLA |
| Light Management for High Energy Yield Vertically Mounted Bi-Facial | ECE, OPTIC |
Salary and Startup
| faculty | Department |
|---|---|
| Albert Barberan | SWES |
| Paul Carini | SWES |
| Xiquan Dong | HAS |
| Luke Mcguire | GEOS |
| Joshua Levine | COMP |
| William Smith | SNRE |
| Lynn Carter | PLANET |
| Christopher Harig | GEOS |
FY16 Highlights
- $44M in new grants and gifts to the UA from WEES investments in faculty and research
- 212 graduate students, 104 undergraduate students, and 23 post-docs enabled through assistantships, wages, scholarships, grants, and research experiences
- 19 new invention disclosures, 19 patent applications filed, 1 new patent issued, 1 new startup company, 3 licenses and options
- 76 hosted workshops, conferences, and other events
Equipment Grants
| grants | departments |
|---|---|
| Pika Benchtop Hyperspectral Imaging System | SWES |
| DTC-300 Thermal Conductivity Meter | CEEM |
| Portable Surface Energy Balance System | SNRE |
| Urban Agriculture Vertical Farming System for CAE | ABE |
| Digital PCRTM | SWES, ACBS |
| Coupled above- and below-ground instrumentation arrays | SGD |
| No Description "AZ Resch Labs - Interdisciplinary" | SWES |
| Eddy covariance system for quantifying Pistachio water us | SNRE |
| HydroSphere sensor for WQ monitoring device | CEP |
| ProDSS meter, cable and sensors for HydroSphere | CEP |
| Pipettes for PCR Droplet | SWES |
| Disk storage | HAS |
Research Awards
| Grant | Departments |
|---|---|
| The Economic Consequences of Uncertainty about Environmental Policy | ECON |
| Optimization of Storage System and Demand Response for Renewable Energy Integration | SIE |
| Enhanced Algae Growth Though Solar Spectral Management | OPTIC, CBC, CHEE |
| Enhanced Power Conversion Efficiency in Heterojunctions of Low-Bandgap Polymers for Organic Photovoltaics | PHYS |
| Electrically Conductive Sulfur Copolymers for High Energy Density Li-S Batteries | CBC |
| Organic Thermoelectrics: Breaking the Barrier for Conversion of Heat to Electricity | MSE, CBC |
| Intelligent Building Envelope Technology Framework for (SWAMP) Solar, Water, and Metabolic Processes | CAPLA, MSE, INFO |
| Efficient CO2 utilization for increased biomass productivity | CHEE |
| Consortium for Adaptive Algae Products | PLANT, CHEE |
| In Situ water treatment nitroaromatic pollutants | CHEE, SWES |
| High Efficiency inland water desalination | AME |
| Framework for More Effective and Efficient Global Sensitivity Analysis | HWRS |
| Determining the role of hydraulic redistribution regimes in the critical zone - an experimental and modeling synthesis | SGD, B2 |
| Coupled Hydrological and Geochemical Process Evolution at the Landscape Evolution Observatory | HWRS, B2 |
| Concept Proposal to General Services Administration to Assess Impact of Green Building Design on Human Health and Wellbeing - a Study at the GSA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. | CIM |
| IRAP: Integrating Climate Information and Decision Processes for Regional Climate Resilience | IE |
| Desert Southwest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit |
Salary and Startup
| Faculty | Departments |
|---|---|
| Adam Henry | SGPP |
| Kevin Anchukaitus | SGD |
| Jessica Tierny | GEOS |
| Michael Bogan | SNRE |
| Thomas Galarneau | HAS |
| Monica Ramirez | SWES |
| Laura Bakkensen | SGPP |
| Ben Champion | SUST |