Ten Groups of Faculty Receive Intellectual Community Planning Grants for 2020

The Duke University Provost’s Office has awarded Intellectual Community Planning Grants to 10 groups for the 2020 calendar year.

A key goal of Together Duke is to invest in faculty as scholars and leaders of the university’s intellectual communities. To foster collaboration around new and emerging areas of interest, Intellectual Community Planning Grants (ICPG) ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 are available to groups of faculty. Recipients can use the funds to support the exploration of new collaborations, covering the cost of meeting venues, food, external speakers or other meeting costs, and research to identify potential collaborators at Duke and elsewhere.

Kate Konschnik, director of the Nicholas Institute's Climate and Energy Program, is part of one group that will bring together Duke faculty and students from STEM disciplines, law, and policy. The group will seek to facilitate the provision of timely comments from Duke experts to state and federal agencies on pending regulations that implicate scientific and technical issues. Following a series of conversations and planning events, members hope to establish a center at Duke that would create a unique model for interdisciplinary education in science, law, and policy through actual participation in the regulatory process. Group members are:

• Lead: Pate Skene, School of Medicine
• Michael B. Waitzkin, Initiative for Science & Society
• Jeff Ward, School of Law
• Jonathan Wiener, School of Law; Nicholas School of the Environment; Sanford School of Public Policy
• Mark Borsuk, Pratt School of Engineering
• Kate Konschnik, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions
• Lori Bennear, Nicholas School of the Environment
• Sarah Rispin Sedlak, Initiative for Science & Society

The 2020 grants include faculty from all of Duke’s schools as well as the University of North Carolina, NC State University, and NC Central University.