The Center for the Environment is an interdisciplinary hub of environmental research that is committed to generating transformative solutions to our deepest societal challenges including: climate change, air pollution, access to clean water, food insecurity, biodiversity loss and infectious diseases.
By the numbers
139
Center scholars
46
Proposals/Grants supported
1000+
Activity participants
The Center’s mission
The center serves as a cross-cutting collaboration hub, encouraging partners, faculty and students to advance research projects in areas including biodiversity, environmental justice, planetary health, environmental solutions, and climate change. Here’s a closer look at who we are, what we do, and why it matters for our community, our region and our world.
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Upcoming Events
Work with us! Program Coordinator position now open
The Program Coordinator engages a broad community of researchers and partners to expand the scope and scale of interdisciplinary environmental research at WashU, in order to address society’s deepest environmental challenges. This role does that by managing key programs of the Center for the Environment’s collaboration hub, and research accelerator functions.
Featured research & stories
A conversation with Tristram R. Kidder, co-director of Public Health & Society
Archaeologist TR Kidder brings an anthropological perspective to studying health, culture and the environment
Michael Wysession explores how geology shaped human history in new Great Courses series
New 24-lecture series connects earthquakes, volcanoes, climate and other geologic events to the course of human history
For Hester Blum, scholarship is an expedition
From “Moby-Dick” to the Northwest Passage, Blum follows literary questions beyond the archive and into the environments that shaped them.
The WashU ecosystem
Within the WashU ecosystem of environmental research, education, and practice, the Center for the Environment serves as a connector. Much like a biodiversity corridor, we work to create space where our partners within the ecosystem and across distinct disciplines come together to address our world’s biggest environmental challenges.
In the news
Evidence of earliest silkworm farming outside China found, upending Silk Road timeline
4,000-year-old cocoons found in Uzbekistan likely made their way to the region 2,000 years before the Silk Road even existed
Why Are There So Many Earthquakes Happening? We Asked Geologists.
The recent string of earthquakes are a reminder that we need to be prepared for “The Big One.”
Day in the life of a WashU undergraduate summer researcher
Come along with WashU sophomore Joshitha Bodavula for a day in the life as a student in the Center for the Environment’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program.
