Welcome to the UVA Environmental Futures Forum 2025, hosted by the UVA Environmental Institute.
This biannual signature event from the UVA Environmental Institute brings together leading researchers, practitioners, and community members to examine how UVA and partners worldwide pioneer research that connects academic discoveries to actionable solutions.
About the UVA Environmental Institute
The Institute supports interdisciplinary research and training at the intersection of environmental change and human well-being. The Environmental Institute (formerly the Environmental Resilience Institute or "ERI") connects faculty, students, and citizens to create solutions for a more resilient and sustainable future.
UVA’s Environmental Institute links research to action to find solutions for climate and environmental resilience challenges. The Institute fosters collaboration, providing support for new projects as well as amplifying and connecting work conducted across Grounds. EI creates opportunities for the next generation of leaders to engage with some of the toughest environmental futures challenges through interdisciplinary research and practical experiences. UVA's Environmental Institute builds external partnerships to connect research and discovery with real-world solutions.
The Environmental Institute does this by:
Investing in and facilitating interdisciplinary research, merging theories, methods, and data to develop novel frameworks and applications that are transformative and have societal impact.
Providing a hub of environmental resilience and climate change research at the University of Virginia.
Training the next generation of leaders in integrative research and how it can be used to implement solutions.
Cultivating external partnerships to translate research findings across UVA into policy and practice.
Today, the Environmental Institute stewards popular and successful programs such as the Climate Collaborative Initiative, Climate Fellowships, Practitioner Fellowships, student internship programs, and seed funding for UVA researchers.
Learn about the Resilient Appalachia Climate Collaborative.
A multidisciplinary team, supported by the Envrionmental Institute. is working with UVA Wise and a wide group of organizations and external partners (including, local, state and federal policymakers, community groups, facilitators, and other anchor institutions in the region) to consider: Can broad-based community resilience planning lead to higher levels of community support for renewable energy projects?
Learn about the Climate Restoration Intitiative.
Launched in 2020 by the Environmental Institute, the Climate Restoration Initiative (CRI) convenes members to consider and recommend ways Virginia can meet its net zero targets while identifying economically profitable and sustainable new industries for Virginia. The CRI is focused specifically on carbon removal strategies, which are deliberate, large-scale efforts to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Learn about the MEGHA Climate Collaborative.
A team of researchers from the University of Virginia and UVA Environmental Institute, led by Sheetal Sekhri, are on the ground in Bihar, India to help find solutions to constant flooding. This project aims to address a complex issue: the agents of change, elected women representatives (EWRs), face several constraints.