Sustainable Biodiversity Fund
Internal — Cornell University only
Sustainable Biodiversity Fund supports Cornell graduate students’ interdisciplinary research to protect biodiversity, preserve ecosystem services, and sustain irreplaceable evolutionary history.
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Funder: Cornell University
Due Dates: October 22, 2026 (Research symposium) | November 10, 2026, 5:00 p.m. ET (Full proposals) | End of January 2027 (Estimated awards) | February 15, 2027 (Earliest project start)
Funding Amounts: Up to $7,000, or $8,000 with undergraduate assistant support, including indirect costs, for 6–24 months
Summary: Supports Cornell graduate students’ innovative, interdisciplinary research to preserve biodiversity, ecosystem services, and evolutionary history.
Key Information: Applicants must remain enrolled at Cornell throughout the award and have a current Cornell Atkinson Faculty Fellow mentor.
Description
The Sustainable Biodiversity Fund, administered by the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, provides research funding to Cornell doctoral students and eligible terminal-degree students across all disciplines. It supports innovative, interdisciplinary work addressing pressing questions in protecting natural biodiversity, preserving its global ecosystem services, and sustaining four billion years of irreplaceable evolutionary history.
Supported research explores how biological diversity originates and persists, how species and ecological communities respond to environmental change, and how conservation and management protect threatened ecosystems. Projects span natural and agricultural landscapes, forests, fresh waters, and marine systems. Examples include forest restoration, pollination, microbial diversity, conservation genomics, invasive species, human–wildlife coexistence, and conservation governance. The program values research with potential impact beyond academia.
