what we do
The PSIEE promotes Penn State's interdisciplinary energy and environmental enterprise through a wide variety of activities. Among them are the:
- Hiring of new faculty;
- Financial support of faculty developing multiple large-scale research proposals;
- Sponsorship of an undergraduate Environmental Inquiry minor;
- Matching funds for individual proposals;
- Sponsorship of graduate and undergraduate training;
- Coordination of research and teaching infrastructure;
- Oversight of an energy and environmental science policy forum;
- Coordination of Research Theme Committees;
- Proposal preparation and sponsored research management services;
- Monitoring of funding opportunities and their communication to faculty;
- Communication with government and non-government sponsors; and
- Promotion of Penn State's environmental capabilities through our web site, our listservs, and outreach to sponsors.
Key Initiatives
The PSIEE provides support for the development of new project initiatives. Recent initiatives include:
- Support to establish a Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics. The virtual center of excellence cuts across disciplines and links expertise that scale from the within-host molecular dynamics to population-level epidemiology and reaching to environmental health issues at the landscape scale to pursue major NIH funding.
- Support for the Hydrogen Energy Center, whose activities span energy production, biofuels, transportation, green engineering, and sustainable technologies, to develop inter-college proposals.
- Support for the Center for Molecular Toxicology and Carcinogenesis to develop a molecular core facility for DNA sequencing and real-time PCR analysis for use in researching the causes of liver cancer.