LSA Faculty and Staff Awarded Nearly $11 million for First-Ever U-M Strategic Initiative Fund

Eight research projects led and co-led by LSA faculty and staff were among the 37 projects selected to receive funding for the University of Michigan’s inaugural Strategic Initiative Fund (SIF) grants. The funding will go toward projects that improve human health, strengthen communities, and build a more sustainable world. The university’s SIF projects received $40 million in total.

To be considered for funding, each proposal had to align with one or more of the five impact areas identified in the Look to Michigan vision and encourage collaboration from scholars and staff across academic departments, university campuses, and multiple colleges, schools, and units.

These LSA faculty and staff received grant funding for the following projects:

Michigan Automotive, Grid, and Energy Transition Initiative (MAGNET) (Leads: Jingyuan Wang and Luming Chen, both assistant professors of economics, in partnership with the Ross School of Business and Ford School of Public Policy) 

• The Michigan Automotive, Grid, and Energy Transition Initiative (MAGNET) is a cross-campus initiative that advances the University of Michigan’s public mission by addressing one of the most consequential challenges facing Michigan and society: the clean energy transition across electricity and transportation systems, with particular attention to how the state’s automotive ecosystem can be mobilized during this transition. MAGNET studies this transition drawing on Michigan’s unique strengths in the automotive and energy sectors.

Living Electronics for Environmental Monitoring (Lead: Vincent Denef, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, in partnership with the College of Engineering) 

• Through a new collaboration across materials engineering, autonomous low-power wireless electronic engineering, and microbial ecology, this initiative will develop a new kind of untethered “living sensor” network that uses microbial communities to monitor air and water quality and detect environmental threats. The project will create centimeter-scale engineered living electronic sensors that can detect environmental threats such as nutrient pollution, harmful algal blooms, biological agents, and the broader impacts of climate and land-use change.

Great Lakes Blue Engine (Leads: Doreen Tinajero, managing director of strategic initiatives at the LSA Center for Social Solutions, Alford Young Jr., associate director of the Center for Social Solutions; Arthur F. Thurnau Professor; Edgar G. Epps Collegiate Professor of Sociology; professor of Afroamerican and African studies and of public policy)

• This project addresses a growing workforce and infrastructure challenge in the Great Lakes region’s water sector. Aging water systems, climate stressors, population shifts, and new water-intensive industries are increasing the need for modern, resilient water infrastructure, just as the sector faces a major talent shortage, with many experienced workers nearing retirement. The project frames this challenge as both a risk and an opportunity: by strengthening water-sector education, credentialing, and career pathways, the region can build a “Blue Engine” that supports climate resilience, economic mobility, and environmental equity, positioning U-M as the defining public institution addressing this looming national crisis at the regional scale. 

The Wolverine Kitchen Lab (Lead: Miranda Brown, Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker Collegiate Professor of Chinese Studies and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, in partnership with Michigan Dining)

• The Michigan Kitchen Lab transforms the kitchen into a shared academic space where students practice interdisciplinary problem-solving at the intersection of food, culture, science, sustainability, and health. Rather than treating cooking as a demonstration or extracurricular activity, the Kitchen Lab frames the kitchen as a working laboratory where students learn by doing, becoming a practical bridge across sustainability, health, humanities, social sciences, STEM, democracy, and community engagement.

Michigan Initiative to Reprogram Cells for Diabetes (MIRC-D) (Co-Lead: Anthony Bloch, Alexander Ziwet Collegiate Professor of Mathematics, in partnership with the U-M Medical School)

• The Michigan Initiative to Reprogram Cells for Diabetes (MIRC-D), led in partnership with U-M spinout iReprogram, is developing and testing a predictive platform that aims to reprogram a patient’s own cells into functional replacements. Integrating mathematics, biology, and computer science, MIRC-D’s central goal is to move diabetes care beyond chronic disease management toward regenerative repair by using direct cell reprogramming to convert a patient’s own cells into therapeutic cell types.

Center for Democracy & Civic Empowerment (Lead: Jenna Bednar, professor of political science and public policy and research professor in the Center for Political Studies, in partnership with the Ford School of Public Policy)

• The Center for Democracy & Civic Empowerment (DCE) is an initiative housed at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy that seeks to advance a clearer, evidence-based understanding of what it takes to establish and sustain democracy and to translate that understanding into the civic capacity of our students and the public.

M|Lands: Training Sustainability’s Workforce through U-M Land-Labs (Co-Lead: Christopher Dick, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, curator of the U-M Herbarium, and director of the ES George Reserve, in partnership with the Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum, School for Environment and Sustainability, Office of Campus Sustainability, and U-M Custodial & Ground Services)

• Sustainability’s labor force needs practical, hands-on experience that unifies systems, technology, and market innovations with ecological knowledge and stewardship. M|Lands will place the University of Michigan at the forefront of sustainability workforce development by mobilizing its more than 40,000 acres of land—of which fewer than 5,000 are actively stewarded—to develop a leading, place-based land stewardship training paradigm.

Mi DuRAG: Human-Centered AI for Data Analysis in Research and Education (Co-Lead: Tina Lasisi, assistant professor of anthropology and of ecology and evolutionary biology, in partnership with the College of Engineering)

• A central challenge in AI development is getting AI to work with people instead of replacing them. Most AI data tools treat analysis as something to fully automate: upload a file, get an answer, then start over next time. Michigan Dual-layer Reasoning and Analysis Graphs (Mi DuRAG) aims to create a new approach for AI-driven data analysis that works with people rather than in place of them—an AI data partner that captures expert decisions, rationales, and data structure in a persistent graph rather than fleeting chat logs.

Read the complete story in The University Record. You can also see the complete list of Strategic Initiative Fund Projects on the Look to Michigan website.