33 sustainability projects selected for Accelerator support

The Stanford Sustainability Accelerator has awarded nearly $5 million to teams across 22 departments working to advance climate resilience, clean energy, ocean health, water access, and more.

By
Monika Suhr
33 sustainability projects selected for Accelerator support

A fish market in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, one of Professor Barbara Block’s study sites, where small-scale fishers sell their daily harvest. The team is developing AI and genomic tools to verify seafood species and origin, strengthening traceability and supporting sustainable fisheries. Image credit: Shaili Johri

Thirty-three Stanford teams will pursue new ideas for quickly moving promising research into real-world solutions for heat stress, wildfire recovery, groundwater depletion, crop disease, and other urgent sustainability challenges. 

The projects are the latest of more than 140 selected since 2023 to receive support from the Stanford Sustainability Accelerator and span its eight flagship areas: biological solutions, climate adaptation, electricity, food and agriculture, greenhouse gas removal, industry, planetary intelligence, and water. 

Selected through a competitive process, the new projects represent nearly $5 million in funding. Project teams include 53 faculty members and more than 28 graduate students and postdocs from 22 departments across campus.

Teams are, for example:

  • Developing tools for breeding mushrooms, monitoring marine carbon dioxide removal, mapping landslides, and identifying mosquito habitats
  • Building technologies for harvesting water from air, converting wastewater ammonia into hydrogen, and producing lower-emissions cement and fuels
  • Creating decision-support systems to help communities, utilities, governments, and businesses respond to climate risks

This is the Accelerator’s fourth round of project awards, arriving as wildfires, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, and extreme weather events shape daily life and economic systems worldwide. The new cohort reflects the need for solutions that can work across sectors and communities. Accelerator managing directors work with project teams to refine project plans, identify industry and public-sector partners, launch pilots, and prepare projects to grow beyond Stanford.

“These 33 projects demonstrate the extraordinary breadth of sustainability research underway across Stanford – and the power of bringing disciplines together to tackle complex, real-world challenges,” said Professor Yi Cui, faculty director of the Sustainability Accelerator. “We’re excited to work alongside them to help turn these promising ideas into practical solutions that can scale and deliver a meaningful difference for people and the planet.”

Projects awarded across eight flagship areas

Building with biology and improving agricultural systems

Eight new projects advance biological solutions and food and agriculture. Target applications include improving the viability and sustainability of crops, sustainable protein production on land and in the sea, more efficient and environmentally friendly materials, and improved industrial approaches to agriculture. The tools employed span genetic engineering, mechanical engineering, artificial intelligence, advanced sensing techniques, and public policy. 

“We are now in an era where we have the capability to responsibly deploy biological solutions, like genetic engineering, across a range of sectors, to considerably accelerate both market returns and environmental sustainability,” said Timothy Bouley, managing director for the Accelerator’s projects focused on biological solutions and food and agriculture.

A soybean (Glycine max) field. Assistant Professor Ellen Rim’s project will use synthetic biology and high-throughput screening to identify plant genes that improve soybean resistance to cyst nematodes, which cause an estimated $1 billion in annual crop losses. Image credit: Ayotte, Gilles / Wikimedia Commons

A Bt-colonized Arabidopsis root. Professor José Dinneny’s team is engineering root-colonizing bacteria to manage root growth in hydroponic and greenhouse systems. The approach could reduce root matting, disease, cost, and resource waste in indoor agriculture. Image credit: Kevin Shih

Preparing communities for climate impacts

Five projects added to the climate adaptation cohort focus on helping communities anticipate, adapt to, and recover from climate-related hazards.

Rebuilding in Malibu, California, following the 2025 LA wildfires. Professor Jack Baker’s team is developing decision-support software for post-wildfire and post-disaster recovery. The platform will integrate real-time data and regional recovery models to help decision-makers compare policy options, forecast recovery timelines, and direct resources where they can have the greatest effect. Image credit: Nikola Blagojevic 

Strengthening the clean-energy grid

Five projects aim to make electricity systems more reliable, affordable, efficient, and resilient as demand grows and economies electrify.

Free-space reconfigurable optical interconnects for next-generation data centers. Professor Olav Solgaard is redesigning data-center connections with microelectromechanical systems-based micromirror arrays, an approach that could substantially reduce the energy use and latency of distributed AI and data-center operations. Image credit: J. Lee, O. Solgaard

Advancing carbon removal and industrial decarbonization

Two projects focus on greenhouse gas removal: One is building tools to evaluate carbon-removal projects, and the other is improving monitoring of marine carbon dioxide removal.

Professor Robert Dunbar’s project will build an open-source measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification system for marine carbon dioxide removal. The platform will use moored profiling floats and coastal hydrodynamics models to provide real-time analysis of marine carbon-removal activities. Ocean-Based Carbon Dioxide Removal © 2023 by Ocean Visions

Targeting emissions-intensive manufacturing and materials production

Six projects focus on decarbonizing industry processes, developing lower-emissions fuels and materials, improving chemical production, and advancing policy approaches to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.

“Industry accounts for more than 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, making it one of the most consequential – and challenging – sectors to decarbonize. I am excited to see how Stanford’s bold ideas will catalyze meaningful progress across critical areas of energy and materials,” said Albert Chan, managing director for the Accelerator’s projects focused on electricity, grid systems & industry.

Potential applications of engineered biopolymer composite (EBC) bricks and blocks used in construction. Professor Michael Lepech’s team is developing the low-cost building material as an alternative to energy-intensive clay bricks and concrete blocks, with early deployment planned in markets such as Bangladesh. Image credit: B. Miao, A. Lesh

Using planetary intelligence to reduce risks

Three projects will use planetary intelligence, such as sensors, drones, satellite data, and artificial intelligence, to improve understanding of hazards and protect public health.

A landslide prediction map generated from continuous satellite imagery. Professor George Hilley’s team is testing a human-in-the-loop machine-learning system that identifies where and when landslides can occur, with potential applications in risk assessment, infrastructure planning, and disaster preparedness. Yellow regions show landslides detected following the 2018 earthquake in Hokkaido, Japan. Image credit: Sutton, M., Mirus, B., and Hilley, G. E. (in press).

Improving water security and water-system efficiency

Four projects focus on water access, groundwater recharge, wastewater treatment, and utility infrastructure.

An atmospheric water-harvesting prototype powered by sunlight-generated heat in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Assistant Professor Carlos Diaz-Marin is developing low-cost hydrogel-salt materials that capture water vapor from the air and release it using solar heat. The project will improve the materials, system design, performance, and cost of the technology. Image credit: Carlos D. Diaz-Marin

Together, the 33 new projects reflect the Sustainability Accelerator’s emphasis on amplifying Stanford research through partnerships, implementation support, and practical expertise to move promising ideas out of the university, positioned to scale and shape a more sustainable future.

View all 33 new projects

  1. A high-throughput screening platform to enhance nematode resistance in soybeans
  2. Identifying enzymes for robust biodegradable plastics production through high-throughput functional screening
  3. Modulation of root growth using engineered root-colonizing Bacillus thuringiensis
  4. AI-guided mushroom breeding for agriculture and regenerative manufacturing
  5. Supporting wildfire recovery using regional recovery models
  6. A high-resolution, human-in-the-loop flood early warning system for informal settlements
  7. Evaluating and scaling natural capital capacity building for transformative decision-making in small island developing states
  8. EcoCool: A wearable to prevent heat stress
  9. A unified global platform for scaling effective adaptation
  10. Distributed artificial intelligence via energy-efficient optical interconnects
  11. Demonstrating climate value of real-time building operations: Stanford as a living lab
  12. Rewarding reliability: Market reform policies for a clean, resilient grid
  13. Alectra: High-voltage switches for an electrified future
  14. GridHD: Mapping and predicting grid reliability and affordability around the world
  15. Development of an electrochemical system for capturing and degrading sulfuryl fluoride fumigation emissions
  16. Transforming blue food security and governance with scalable innovations in ocean genomics and AI
  17. Scalable additive manufacturing of thick tissues for sustainable cultivated meat
  18. Tapping the power of blue foods to address malnutrition in Indonesia
  19. Cedar: Cost and carbon evaluation for climate solutions
  20. Development of a scalable measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MMRV) system to support marine CDR (mCDR)
  21. Process intensified syngas production with selective field-enhanced heating
  22. Closed-loop electrochemical regeneration of sodium sulfate waste streams into sulfuric acid and caustic soda
  23. Building a sustainable global masonry industry using engineered biopolymer composites
  24. Low-emissions hydrogen and low-cost performance cement via methane pyrolysis
  25. Industrial Decarbonization Action Partnership (IDAP)
  26. Advancing durable solid oxide electrolysis cells for sustainable fuel production
  27. SMesh: Radio sensor networks to support fire management
  28. Leveraging drone imaging and AI computer vision to improve *Aedes aegypti* vector control programs
  29. Automated temporal landslide detection: Testing whether human-in-the-loop machine learning can bootstrap generalizability
  30. Decentralized and all-weather freshwater production from air
  31. Development of an electrochemical system to convert wastewater ammonia to nitrogen and hydrogen
  32. Verified measurement standards for municipal water loss reduction
  33.  Advancing the global adoption of managed aquifer recharge to reduce the deficit in the groundwater budget

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