Conference: Student and Junior Faculty Support for the International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology (ISSST)

This conference grant is for partial support of US-based students and early career researchers to attend the 2023 International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology (ISSST) conference to be held June 12-15 in Fort Collins, Colorado. The conference will cover a spectrum of issues for assessing and managing products and services across their life cycle, as well as the design, management, and policy implications of sustainably engineered systems and technologies. The ISSST conference framework is that solutions to complex sustainability issues are achieved via trans- disciplinary approaches. Cross-pollination of ideas among natural scientists, engineers, social scientists, industry representatives, and policy makers is necessary for developing sustainable solutions to the grand challenges that society faces. The ISSST conference will include the following themes/areas: (1) The intersection of agroecology and industrial ecology; (2) Integrated human- physical systems; (3) Sustainability and/or resiliency of energy and infrastructure systems; (4) Sustainability education; and (5) other creative sustainability-related topics – new methods and ideas that demonstrate unique partnerships, big ideas, perspectives from non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) disciplines. The conference will also host special sessions to bring participants together in educational sessions, workshops, communications, and professional skills development. The goal of the conference is to maximize impacts by building on its trans- disciplinary framework. The conference will highlight social dimensions of technological systems and proposed engineering solutions. Social equity, differential access and impacts, and environmental justice will be prominent across all of the five themes of the conference. Several sessions are also expected to address the emerging issue of waste valorization. A diverse group of members will share their work in sustainability science and engineering through paper and poster presentations, as well as formal and informal discussions. The conference will also feature a variety of plenary/keynote speakers, including Dr. Braden Allenby, President's Professor and Lincoln Professor of Engineering and Ethics, from Arizona State University and Dr. Lisa Schulte Moore, a MacArthur Fellows Recipient, from Iowa State University. All of this will provide participants a venue for discussing visions, educational approaches, and challenges, as well as provide educators and students opportunities to gain research experience on sustainability in a holistic manner. 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.