SPS Program: Mission, Focus, Funding
| Mission | Focus Areas |
| Topics of Interest | Awarding Funds |
| Steering Committee |
- Build a community of students, faculty, institutions, companies, and individuals committed to science-based discovery and application of the principles that lead to the creation of sustainable products and solutions.
- Integrate concepts of Sustainability into the disciplines of business, science, engineering, and policy.
- Act as a catalyst in creating a new generation of business, R&D, technology, engineering and policy leaders who are committed to and are knowledgeable about sustainability throughout the life of the products and businesses they interact with.
- Serve as an educational program that bridges research, theory, and practice of the next generation of sustainable products and solutions.
Research – The SPS Program financially supports criteria-based multi-disciplinary research, encourages publication of papers and case studies on sustainable products and solutions.
Teaching – The SPS Program will offer a robust, sustainability-focused, lecture series open to the public, elective courses at the Master’s and PhD degree levels that range in topics from sustainability metrics, stakeholder engagement, strategic advantages of sustainability, and sustainability & entrepreneurship.
Experiential Learning – To bridge the gap between academia and the business world, the SPS Program will collaborate with companies on experiential learning engagements to get graduate students out of the classroom and into real businesses where they can apply their newly learned theories and frameworks of sustainability in real-time strategy work.
Outreach – The SPS Program will communicate its lessons on sustainability through a variety of outreach activities, including the SPS Lecture Series, Corporate Partners Program, support for Student Competitions and Fellowships, published research and case studies, and a web-based resource center.
The SPS Program aims to uncover and understand the scientific principles of sustainability in the areas of chemistry, chemical engineering, biology, health sciences, natural resources, public policy, and energy. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
- Reducing and measuring the carbon footprint of products and solutions
- Providing safe drinking water where it doesn’t exist today
- Production of bio-based materials and feedstocks
- Converting biomass into useful products with minimal waste
- Storing energy cleanly and efficiently
- Sustainable market-based solutions
- Measuring the lifecycle environmental footprints across a supply chain
- Decreased use of scarce resources
- Reducing exposure levels to chemicals throughout the life of a product
- Decreased emissions (air, water & land) and non-useful by-products
- Public Policy implications of “sustainable solutions”
- Improved the health profile of the final solution (eg. reduced Persistent, Bioaccumulative, Toxins (PBTs) and Carcinogen, Mutagen, Reproductive toxins (CMRs))
Two key components of the SPS Program’s mission are to sponsor research and support students (and faculty) working toward sustainable products and solutions. This research may take the form of “core” scientific or lab research or it may entail a “case study” or non-lab/sustainable product and solution educational projects.
As a result, the SPS Program plans to fund research, curriculum development, and/or “case study” projects that will help elucidate and better understand the scientific, social, and business principles of sustainability in the areas of chemistry, engineering, business, biology, health sciences, natural resources, public policy, and energy.
The SPS Program also strives to foster inter-disciplinary cooperation, and an important criterion for funding will be the opportunity for interaction between two or more of the UC Berkeley colleges.
Decisions regarding what projects, competitions, and research are to be funded will be made by the SPS Program Steering Committee.
