Taubman College Chair of Urban and Regional Planning Part of First Wave MCubed Funding
Richard Norton, Chair of Urban and Regional Planning, is part of an interdisiplinary research team recently approved for MCubed seed-grant funding. The announcement was made on Wednesday, November 28th in real time on Twitter.
The project titled, “Innovatively Planning for Technological Innovation: Water, Infrastructure, and Sustainability,” was proposed by Josh Newell, an Assistant Professor at the School of Natural Resources & Environment. Nancy Love, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is the other member of the interdisciplinary team.
The project seeks to understand the broad, complex and potentially unanticipated impacts on humans and the environment that could emerge from the deployment of emerging innovative technologies currently being designed to address the compelling water, wastewater, stormwater, and related sustainability problems of today. We will consider impacts of these emerging technologies across a range of spatial scales and planning jurisdictions, using complex systems scenario modeling, focus groups, surveys, and interviews.
The research team will use the Mcubed funds to support a sustainable water infrastructure and planning PhD cohort, composed of students from the College of Engineering, the School of Natural Resources, and Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and mentored by the three MCubed faculty investigators. The project will also hold Idea Lab Sessions, composed of faculty, students, and interested collaborators. Expected deliverables will include a collaborative journal article and research proposals to the National Science Foundation.
MCubed will fund 150 more research projects by the holiday break and new project ideas are being accepted until Monday, December 17th.
