The Environmental Science and Design Research Institute (ESDRI) is dedicated to research and creative activities within natural, human, and built systems, as we develop innovative knowledge, products, and solutions to address local, regional, and global issues.
Students: The institute aims to build research skills in students, in order to cultivate well-rounded, critical thinking professionals. ESDRI recognizes the professional and personal importance of students having foundational research or creative experiences, professional skills, and environmental knowledge, which is facilitated through a variety of workshops, speakers, forums, special events, socials, one-on-one guidance, and more. The institute supports undergraduates through its Fellows Program, in hopes of mentoring a new generation of scholars. ESDRI supports graduate students through its Graduate Student Research Awards. All students are encouraged to share their work at the ESDRI Research Showcase each Spring.
View Current ESDRI Fellows
Faculty: ESDRI provides many opportunities for faculty to advance their research and facilitates multidisciplinary collaborations, procuring intramural and extramural funding, and working with qualified student researchers. The institute engages a broad range of talented scientists, designers, and practitioners, spanning many academic disciplines, fields, and programs. The institute proudly hosts an annual Sustainability Forum, with an ever-evolving theme, which draws from KSU faculty, students, and many of our community partners.
Academic units represented within ESDRI include:
- Aeronautics and Engineering
- Applied and Technical Studies
- Architecture and Environmental Design
- Art
- Biological Sciences
- Chemistry and Biochemistry
- Communication and Information
- Earth Sciences
- English
- Fashion
- Geography
- Peace and Conflict Studies
- Political Science
- Public Health
- Recreation, Park and Tourism Management
- Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies
View ESDRI-affiliated Faculty Members
By empowering environmental research, the institute aims to foster change by drawing from robust, well-informed science and design or extrapolating on the research ourselves. ESDRI encourages students, faculty, and the greater community to understand and leverage the interacting geological, biological, human, economical, cultural, and social systems around us. These overlapping systems impact and regulate the availability of resources (e.g. pure water, clean air, and food), sustain diversity of life on Earth, promote well-being, and affect all of us in our daily life.
Environmental Science and Design Research Institute/We acknowledge that the lands of Ƶ were the previous homes of people who were removed from this area without their consent by the colonial practices of the United States government. Before removal, these groups created networks that extended from Wyoming to the Florida Coast and Appalachia and to the northern reaches of Lake Superior. These societies included people of the Shawnee, Seneca-Cayuga, Delaware, Wyandots, Ottawa and Miami. We honor their lives – past, present, and future – and strive to move beyond remembrance toward reflection and responsibility, through honest accounts of the past and the development of cultural knowledge and community.
Timothy Assal, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Geography, was awarded a grant as a co-principal investigator on a multi-institutional project, “Vulnerability of lower-ecotone aspen forests to altered fire regimes and climate dynamics in the northern Great Basin” (a three-year $299,842 total award with $89,600 going to Ƶ State), which is funded by the . This collaboration includes the United States Geological Survey in Boise, Idaho, Utah State University, and the United States Bureau of Land Management.
Ƶ State's Jonathan Maletic, Ph.D., in the Department of Computer Science and Tara Smith, Ph.D., in the College of Public Health are the winners of the 2021 Faculty Outstanding Research and Scholarship Awards (ORSAs). The ORSAs recognize the hard work and dedication of faculty members who have been with Ƶ State for more than 10 years. Read more about the winners and how they display the highest levels of scholarship.
Researchers from Ƶ and the University of New Mexico determined how nitrogen-fixing plants and soil microbes contribute to the overall nitrogen availability in the Chihuahuan desert in New Mexico.
He Yin, Ph.D., assistant professor in Ƶ’s Department of Geography, recently received NASA’s New (Early Career) Investigator Award in Earth Science. Yin will lead evaluation and research of the devastating effects that the Syrian civil war has had on croplands throughout the eastern Mediterranean region.
Cities are starting to come to life, literally, thanks to the implementation of vegetation through living architecture.
Recent funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) has given interdisciplinary researchers the opportunity to help drive our understanding of patterns in nature when bringing together big data sources collected in different ways.
Ƶ has recently received a flurry of grants totaling more than $3 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), which will support research and innovation in a wide range of fields within the College of Arts and Sciences.
From the iconic outfits made famous by Michael Jackson to the hit television show “What Not to Wear,” the fashion industry continues to emerge as an impactful influencer in many areas of societal behavior.
One of Ƶ’s newest faculty members in the Department of Geology has already made her mark with the recent publication of her and her colleagues’ work to better understand the effects of global warming as it relates to the arctic ocean. Allyson Tessin, assistant professor, specializes in biochemistry, oceanography and sedimentary geology. She is currently studying the relationship between the chemistry of the ocean and climate change.