The Mascaro Center supports an annual seed grant program aimed at engaging a core team of researchers who are passionate about sustainability. Seed grants support graduate student and post-doctoral fellows on one-year research projects.
2022 Research Funding Programs
The Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation is pleased to announce five grant initiatives designed to help Pitt faculty and students engage in sustainability research, education, and outreach. See summaries below with links to the full applications and program RFPs.
| Program |
Due Date | Funding Decisions | Expenditures |
| Research Seed Grants in Sustainability | February 25, 2022 | March 25, 2022 | By June 30, 2023 |
| John C. Mascaro Faculty Programs in Sustainability | February 15, 2022 | March 22, 2022 | By June 30, 2023 |
| Global Engagement Sustainability Grants | February 19, 2022 | March 22, 2022 | Spring 2023 |
| Sustainability Student Prototyping Grants | Rolling (Monthly Review) | Rolling (Monthly Review) | By June 30, 2023 |
| Student Groups Program Grants | Rolling (Monthly Review) | Rolling (Monthly Review) | By June 30, 2023 |
Complete Listing of Awards from 2004-2021:
A Circular Chemical Industry: Closing the Anthropogenic Carbon Cycle with Biomimetic Reactors
James McKone, Chemical and Petroleum Engineering
Mapping the Landscape of Seafood in Pittsburgh Markets: Do Safe, Sustainable and Accessible Meet?
Carla Ng, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Optimization of Traffic Signals on Pitt's Campus Road Network to Reduce Fuel Consumption and Green House Gas Emissions from Vehicular Traffic
Aleksandar Stevanovic, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Up-Cycling of Machining Scrap via Mechano-Chemical Attrition Enhanced Hydride-Dehydride Processing for Sustainable Ti-Powder Fabrication
Jorg Wiezorek, Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Ravi Shankar, Industrial Engineering
Towards Using Microbes for Sustainable Construction Materials: Feasibility Study
Sarah Haig, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Steven Sachs, Civil & Environmental Engineering
**Jointly funded by MCSI and IRISE
Chemical Recycling of Polyethylene to Ethylene
Eric Beckman, Chemical & Petroleum Engineering
Ioannis Bourmpakis, Chemical & Petroleum Engineering
Robert Enick, Chemical & Petroleum Engineering
Goetz Veser, Chemical & Petroleum Engineering
Investigating Flexible Piezoelectric Materials with Lower Water Pressures
Katherine Hornbostel, Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
Amplifying the Efficiency of Tungsten Disulfide Thermoelectric Devices
Feng Xiong, Electrical & Computer Engineering
Computational Methods to Design Efficient and Sustainable Chemical Catalysis
Peng Liu, Chemistry
Case Study of the Application of a Novel Integrated Thermoelectric Device Applied to the Waste Heat Recovery of Fleet Vehicles
Matthew Barry, Mechanical Engineering & Materials Sciences
Shervin Sammak, Mechanical Engineering & Materials Sciences
Life Cycle Assessment Integration for High-Performance Building Design
Melissa Bilec, Civil & Environmental Engineering
The Local Cost of Abandoned Oil and Gas Wells
Jeremy Weber, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs
Dan Bain, Geology
Enable Data-Driven Quantitative Assessment of Building Resilience and Sustainability with Self-Powered Sensors
Hao Sun, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Jingtong Hu, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Protein lithography: a sustainable technology for sub-5-nm nanomanufacturing
Mostafa Bedewy, Industrial Engineering
High efficiency refrigeration and cooling through additive manufactured magnetocaloric devices
Markus Chmielus, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Toward machine learning blueprints for greener chelants
John Keith, Chemical and Petroleum Engineering
H2P: HydoPonics to Pyrolysis: An enclosed system for the phytoremediation and destruction of perfectly persistent emerging contaminants in our water
David Sanchez,Civil and Environmental Engineering
Carla Ng,Civil and Environmental Engineering
Student-based observations of soil moisture to quantify dynamics at the intersection of natural and built environments
Brian Thomas, Geology & Environmental Science
Daniel Bain Geology & Environmental Science
Emily Elliott, Geology & Environmental Science
David Sanchez,Civil and Environmental Engineering
Learning about sustainability: social learning via solar panel adoption
Andrea La Nauze, Economics
Graham Beattie, Economics
A novel process for efficient, decentralized ammonia synthesis: towards fertilizer production with drastically reduced environmental footprint
Goetz Veser, Chemical Engineering
β- Ga2O3 Nanoelectronics: A Path to a Sustainable Semiconductor Technology for High Efficiency Electricity Conversion from Renewables
William Stanchina, Electrical Engineering
Desalination of sequestration and release of water in poly crystals
Sachin Velankar, Chemical and Petroleum Engineering
Pollination in the city: Designing urban pollinator gardens that are resilient to air pollution
Tia-Lynn Ashman, Biological Sciences
Green Infrastructure Implementation Deepening Interdisciplinary at the University of Pittsburgh
Michael Blackhurst, University Center for Social and Urban Research
Randy Walsh,Economics
Quantifying Reductions in Diesel-Related Air Pollution Exposures across Downtown Pittsburgh
Jane Clougherty, Graduate School of Public health
Emily Elliott, Geology & Environmental Science
Developing CrAssphage as a marker of human fecal pollution in the environment
Kyle Bibby, civil and environmental engineering
Indoor air impacts and Pittsburgh 2030 energy district
Melissa Bilec, civil and environmental engineering
SHIELD: Sustainable, Holistic infrastructure for enabling life-cycle-aware datacenters
Alex Jones,electrical and computer engineering
Managing the Water-Energy Nexus for Shale Gas Production-connecting life cycle assessment with process systems engineering
Vikas Khanna, civil and environmental engineering
Measuring the Effect of Grid Voltage on Building Energy Labs
Thomas McDermott, electrical and computer engineering