NSF Engines Development Award: Advancing climate technologies in Eastern North Carolina (NC)

This NSF Engines Development Award will develop use-inspired solutions that promote coastal community resilience. Challenges facing low-lying coastal regions include climate change stressors, population growth, and a growing socioeconomic divide. These stressors intersect with race, gender, and socioeconomic status disproportionately. Economies must become more sustainable and resilient to climate and population change and do so rapidly. Fast-paced economic change is especially important where resources are limited, and stressors can intensify. This project aims to use living ecosystems and their processes to create and enhance products and services. The region of service is eastern North Carolina, with its base in Wilmington. The focal sectors slated for rapid development are coastal infrastructure, aquaculture, and renewable energy targeting five aspects: 1) Engineering with Nature, 2) Environmental Sensing & Signaling, 3) Ecosystem-Inspired Materials, 4) Ecosystem Genetic Engineering, and 5) Ecosystem Service Measuring & Modeling. The project is led by a diverse and responsive team of researchers from universities and community colleges in partnership with Chambers of Commerce, non-profit entities, and for-profit businesses that seek to develop a pipeline for translating use-inspired innovations into marketable products while developing a robust regional workforce. To develop the future NSF Engine, this project will forge a network of diverse partners able to hasten translation into practice, including offices of technology transfer, innovation, and entrepreneurship (e.g., NC Biotechnology Center, the Small Business and Technology Development Center, Community College Small Business Centers, Prospera, NC Department of Commerce Center for Workforce Solutions, NC IDEA, and the NC Black Entrepreneurship Council). Additionally, the team will deploy stakeholder surveys to identify gaps in the entrepreneurial landscape that must be bridged to make economic growth a reality. Community College partners will build pathways to workforce development and business creation. By completing this development award, this project will have established: 1) a regional transdisciplinary use-inspired research network, 2) strategies that promote novel R&D opportunities, 3) a cross-university network of research translation expertise and capital, and 4) community engagement strategies that build participation. Further, an External Advisory Board will assist in recruiting the cross-sector leadership team of a future NSF Engine. Through these activities, this project will create a network to promote community climate resilience while establishing a robust and inclusive regional economy. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.