Special 2025 Mid-Year Call for Environmental Venture Projects Proposals

Federal priorities on protecting the environment, tackling climate change, extracting fossil fuels and minerals, reducing wildfire risks, and sustaining an outstanding federal workforce are rapidly changing, with potentially profound consequences. These changes in priorities represent a major shift in philosophy and objectives. As such, they provide a host of opportunities for research. What are the implications of the U.S.’s new environmental policies? How are changes in international military and humanitarian assistance impacting environmental conditions, including both ecosystem and public health, around the world? How are altered trade and immigration policies impacting the environment?

Answering these and similar questions requires new research, on a schedule that enables tracking policies as they are implemented and impacts as they unfold. The Woods Institute’s Special Mid-Year Environmental Venture Projects (EVP) funding opportunity is intended to help enable this research.

The deadline for proposals has passed

For this call, individual Stanford faculty or teams of collaborating Stanford faculty (with Academic Council or University Medical Line standing) may propose projects requesting up to $100,000 over two years. Projects should address specific environmental issues related to impacts on climate, health, food, water, oceans and biodiversity resulting from recent and ongoing changes in policy, especially in the U.S. EVP projects submitted in response to this call will be evaluated by a committee of reviewers based on timeliness, intellectual merit, potential for practical insights or solutions, the interdisciplinary strength of the investigator or team, and the project’s potential to secure subsequent funding.

Note: The purpose of this call is not to backfill projects that have lost funding. It is instead to enable a set of important new research projects that effectively explore the environmental dimensions and implications of the rapidly changing policy landscape.

EVP mid-year grants

• Support up to $100,000 over up to two years for research projects that address the above and per the priorities and guidelines below
• EVP grants are set up as sponsored research awards rather than departmental grants and must comply accordingly. Requests may be for less than $100,000, and PIs are encouraged to be judicious in their requests.

Program priorities

The EVP program seeks:

• High-risk, potentially transformative research projects that have the potential to produce solutions to our critical global environmental challenges
• Projects that address cross-cutting challenges to climate, health, food, water, oceans and biodiversity in support of one or more of the Woods Institute’s objectives:
  • Thriving Ecosystems on Land and in the Ocean
  • Natural Climate Solutions
  • Climate Change Adaptation
  • Human and Planetary Health
• Broad research approaches are invited, and might include environmental ethics; cultural and humanistic influences; decision science; economic and incentive systems; where, among who and why environmental burdens disproportionately locate; political ecology; stewardship; risk perception and analysis; communication; mitigation and adaptation; valuation; and interdisciplinary modeling
• Projects that involve interdisciplinary collaborations, especially among Stanford faculty who have not worked together, including scholarly communities that have not been active in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability to date, are encouraged.

Mid-year EVP program guidelines

Proposed projects should:

• Represent the above program priorities
• Contribute toward key insights into impacts of recent U.S. policy changes
• Have the potential for obtaining additional support
• Projects may involve multiple Stanford faculty Principal Investigators (PIs). However, projects proposed for this 2025 mid-year EVP call by a single faculty member are eligible for award. The regular January EVP RFP requires two faculty PIs per proposed project. All PIs must be Stanford faculty with Academic Council or University Medical Line standing
• Faculty members may be Lead PI on only one EVP application for this mid-year request for proposals
• Faculty with open Woods Institute awards are eligible to apply for this mid-year request for proposals
• Faculty awarded a grant in response to this request for proposals will remain eligible to apply for "regular" Environmental Venture Projects or Realizing Environmental Innovation Program funding in response to the RFPs in January (subject to the regular conditions
• EVP grants must otherwise comply with the requirements and restrictions for University Research awards of the Office of Sponsored Research

Questions?

If you have any questions about your project or research idea, or would like additional information, please contact Chris Field, Stanford Woods Institute Director at cfield@stanford.edu or Brian Sharbono, Director of Programs at sharbono@stanford.edu.

If you and your Research Administrator have questions about the budget and budget justification requirements, please contact Yiannis Katsamakis, Woods Finance Analyst at yiannis.katsamakis@stanford.edu and Brian Sharbono at sharbono@stanford.edu.

If you have technical questions or issues in submitting your LOI through the online application system, please contact Keith Iverson, IT Manager at kailou@stanford.edu for assistance.