Balancing environmental, economic, and societal needs for a sustainable future encompasses problems of unprecedented size and complexity. With naturally occuring settings, global scale, dynamic and uncertain behavior, mixture of discrete and continuous effects, and highly interactive components, problems associated with sustaining the earth's resources can greatly benefit from computational methods and thinking. There is a key role to be played by computing and information sciences in increasing the efficiency and effectiveness in the way humanity manages and allocates natural resources. Toward that objective, this Expedition aims to establish and nurture a new field of study--Computational Sustainability--driven by a wide range of hard computational problems and critical challenges in the area of sustainability. This applied theoretical Expedition will pursue interdisciplinary research across three computational sustainability themes: conservation and biodiversity; balancing socio-economic demands and the environment; and renewable energy. With the view that natural problems may have a special structure discoverable by machine learning techniques that allows them to be solved even though they are NP-hard, this research attempts to stimulating new research synergies that cross boundaries and merge ideas from combinatorial optimization, dynamical systems, machine learning and constraint reasoning. An "Institute for Computational Sustainability" will be based at Cornell to serve as the nexus of foundational science advancements and practical applications in sustainability. Part of its mission and outreach is to establish a vibrant and diverse research community in the area of computational sustainability, drawing new students into the field from all backgrounds including students from underrepresented groups via summer research experiences and other such proactive activities.
Project Outcomes Bowdoin College, P.I. Mary Lou Zeeman The overarching goal of this collaborative project, led by Cornell University, was to create and nurture the new field of Computational Sustainability, with the vision that computing and mathematical sciences can – and should – play a key role in increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the way we manage and allocate our natural resources. Thus, the Institute for Computational Sustainability (ICS) was founded by the initial collaborating institutions: Cornell University, Oregon State University, Bowdoin College, the Conservation Fund, Howard University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. See www.cis.cornell.edu/ics. Over the five-year duration of the award, ICS has stimulated the growth of a vibrant research community, reaching far beyond the founding institutions, and interweaving research and education in a wide range of Computational Sustainability projects. The particular roles of the Bowdoin team have been 1) Integrating undergraduate students into research on computational sustainability projects, 2) Community building and 3) Developing sustainability curriculum materials across the mathematical sciences. Thus, the intellectual merit and broader impact are tightly interwoven. 1. Integrating undergraduate students into research. Over the duration of the award, 16 Bowdoin faculty members collectively supervised 26 Bowdoin undergraduate students conducting independent research projects on computational sustainability topics ranging across the sciences. Over half the 26 students are women in mathematical and computational sciences, and half the students have gone on to graduate studies or are planning to do so. The student research projects have included: Fishery management in the Gulf of Maine Triple benefits in fishery management when spatial heterogeneity is considered Optical characterization of dissolved organic matter in Maine rivers Consistency and interpretability in metagenomic sequences Long term trends in tropical fish larvae of the Hawaiian Islands revealed by DNA barcoding The effects of clonal plant growth on the standard metrics of genetic diversity Mathematical quantification of resilience Resilience of Biological Systems Modeling malaria control to learn from the success story of Thailand Turbulence and double diffusion in Disko Bay, Greenland Interactions between climate change, weather extremes and land use Dynamics of paleoclimate Inferring atmospheric histories from firn air Tipping in public interest in climate change Carbon sequestration for home heating systems and the Bowdoin power plant The results of the student and faculty research projects have been, and continue to be, disseminated through publications and conference presentations. 2. Community Building. The Bowdoin PI, Zeeman, was especially involved in building bridges between the ICS and mathematical communities: Mathematics and Climate Research Network (MCRN). Zeeman co-founded and co-directs MCRN, which links mathematicians and climate scientists around the world through a virtual network. MCRN students, postdocs and faculty across the US collaborate with each other through internet working groups. MCRN also runs workshops, summer schools, special sessions at international conferences, and focus years at NSF mathematics institutes www.mathclimate.org Mathematics of Planet Earth (MPE 2013): This global initiative represents an unprecedented level of international cooperation among research institutes, learned societies, educational institutions and funding agencies. Zeeman was on the MPE leadership team, helping to envision and run the two MPE 2013 planning workshops at the American Inst. of Math. and design the web portal, serving on the Scientific, Steering, Umbrella and Workshops Cttees of the MPE team, and co-chaired the Education Cttee for the initiative www.mpe2013.org Conferences: Over the five-year duration of the award, Zeeman co-organized over 20 conferences, workshops and minisymposia on the Mathematics of Sustainability and Climate. Lectures: Over the five-year duration of the award, Zeeman delivered over 30 conference and public lectures on Math of Climate, Sustainability & Resilience. For example, see MAA distinguished lecture at www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9OW8vaRVdQ 3) Developing sustainability curriculum materials across the mathematical sciences. The Bowdoin PI, Zeeman, was active in co-envisioning and co-organizing: Ongoing: MCRN curriculum and outreach material, disseminated freely at the MCRN webportal: www.mathclimate.org/education Ongoing: MPE curriculum and outreach material, disseminated freely at the MPE webportal: www.mpe2013.org/curriculum-material 2009: Math Awareness Month, Mathematics and Climate: www.mathaware.org/mam/2009 2010: Cornell University graduate class: Topics in Computational Sustainability 2011: DIMACS meeting to develop Sustainability Modules for Undergraduate Mathematics Classes 2013: MCRN-MAA short course at the Joint Mathematics Meetings: Conceptual Climate Models 2013: Bowdoin College capstone course: Mathematical Modeling for Climate and Sustainability 2013: Math Awareness Month, Mathematics of Sustainability: www.mathaware.org/mam/2013
