Empowering Solutions for a Sustainable Future

The Institute of the Environment (IoE) at UConn brings together the expertise and passion of scientists and scholars across the University to address some of the most pressing challenges and grandest opportunities society faces in the 21st century.

The resources and expertise of the Center for Environmental Sciences and Engineering, the Office of Sustainability, the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History, and the Natural Resources Conservation Academy support the IoE’s integrated mission of research, education, and engagement. The IoE works to advance foundational understanding and develop innovative solutions to pressing environmental challenges, to prepare the next generation as adept and agile members of a 21st century workforce, and to inform and engage the public about what are arguably the existential issues of our time.

Solving environmental problems related to climate change, sustainability, food security, pollution, and species extinction requires an interdisciplinary approach that leverages expertise from diverse disciplines across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. It requires consideration of multiple angles, from biophysical to cultural, and from legal to health perspectives.

A Living Building

Join us on an exciting and innovative philanthropic opportunity as we raise funds to construct a distinctive “Living Building” to house the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History and partners at the Institute of the Environment.

Securing a Sustainable Environmental Future Symposium

Video recordings from the October 2023 Cross College Symposium on Securing a Sustainable Environmental Future are now available here.

     

Environment in the News

UConn Department of Earth Sciences and Department of Marine Sciences Professor Pieter Visscher researches stromatolites, which are fossilized biofilms where Earth's earliest life forms evolved.
Microbial Slime: The Ultimate System to Understand Our Planet

‘These biofilms are just remarkable. They may be the ultimate system to study to understand our planet’

Jeffrey McCutcheon
Water Research Foundation Awards Top Honor to UConn Engineering Professor

McCutcheon intends to use the award to broaden the application of his manufacturing approach to other materials of interest to the membrane science community

A student at the Homer Babbidge Library, reading.
UConn Reads Announces ’24-’25 Selection: ‘All We Can Save’

A collection of provocative and illuminating essays from women on the front lines of climate change