URBANA, Ill. — The University of Illinois System’s Discovery Partners Institute (DPI) and the University of Birmingham (UoB) have simultaneously received funding to establish the Global Center for Clean Energy and Equitable Transportation Solutions (CLEETS). The center will bring together experts on climate, energy, data science, and transportation to accelerate discovery of new pathways to reduce carbon emissions in road transportation.
Funding for the CLEETS Global Center comes from a combined investment of $10 million in awards received by both the DPI and the UoB. The investment is made possible by a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation and nearly £5 million in funding from the UK Research and Innovation Engineering and Physical Sciences Council.
In an announcement from the DPI, Ashish Sharma, climate and urban sustainability lead at the Discovery Partners Institute and CLEETS Global Center’s director, emphasized the importance of grassroot solutions to shared global challenges.
“Climate change is a global problem, but its solutions are local,” Sharma said. “Through these joint awards, we will be able to test and quantify the anticipated impact of policy change scenarios to reduce carbon emissions while also supporting economic opportunity, workforce resilience, and public health.”
Partnerships are a core component of the CLEETS Global Center model.
The UoB will be joined by Cardiff University as a project partner in the United Kingdom. In addition to DPI researchers in the United States, experts from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), Arizona State University (ASU), and the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are among those contributing to the center’s initiatives.
The U.S. team will be led by Sharma and the U.K. team will be under the direction of Jonathan Radcliffe, Reader in Energy Systems and Policy at the UoB and a 2022-2023 BRIDGE Seed Fund Recipient.
“The University of Birmingham has a long-standing strategic partnership with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: the 10th anniversary of this is in 2024, and what better way to mark it than with the establishment of this Centre,” said Professor Robin Mason, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International) at the UoB in an announcement. “We are looking forward to the next decade of engagement with UIUC, and with working with Cardiff University and DPI as the Global Centre begins its work.”
For more information about the CLEETS Global Center, please visit: http://cleets-global-center.org/. The CLEETS Global Center team includes:
U.S. members: Ashish Sharma (DPI), Venkat Venkatakrishnan (DPI), Eleftheria Kontou (UIUC), Petros Sofronis (UIUC), PS Sriraj (UIC), Sandra Gesing (DPI), Peiyuan Li (DPI), Alejandro Dominguez-Garcia (UIUC), Timothy Lindsey (UIUC), Fabio Miranda (UIC), Bo Zou (UIC), Carol Fendt (UIC), Curtis Walker (NCAR), Rajesh Kumar (NCAR), and John M Anderies (ASU).
U.K. members: Jonathan Radcliffe (Birmingham), William Bloss (Birmingham), Lee Chapman (Birmingham), Dilum Dissanayake (Birmingham), Phil Jones (Birmingham), Andrew Quinn (Birmingham), Louise Reardon (Birmingham), Suzanne Bartingon (Birmingham), Neha Mehta (Birmingham), Paul Anderson (Birmingham), Omer Rana (Cardiff), Dimitris Potoglou (Cardiff), Crispin Cooper (Cardiff), Liana Cipigan (Cardiff), Duncas Wass (Cardiff), Maurizio Albano (Cardiff), and Neetesh Saxena (Cardiff).
Marta Schneider is the director for Global Communication at Illinois International. She can be reached at martasch@illinois.edu.
