• Katherine Mills, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Natural Resources, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, was awarded a $10,000 grant for her project, Ecosystem-based Fisheries Management in the Gulf of Maine: Addressing Scientific and Governance Needs. This project will use advanced statistical techniques to identify useful indicators for measuring the status of the ecosystem and will link these ecosystem properties to management decision-making. Mills also will evaluate suitable governance structures for implementing ecosystem-based management in the Gulf of Maine. This effort should integrate ecological and social considerations to complement current population-based management of marine fisheries.
• Dora Sugar, a master's degree candidate in the Department of Natural Resources, was awarded a $5,000 grant for her project, Tree Decline and Defense: Does Calcium Deficiency Predispose Sugar Maple to Disease and Insect Damage? Calcium depletion in soil is caused by acid rain and results in sugar maple decline in some circumstances. By examining trees at two sites (low and high calcium), Sugar hopes to determine whether soil calcium levels are contributing to the decline by decreasing tree resistance to diseases and insects.
• Elena Bondareva, a master's degree candidate in the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis, College of Human Ecology, was awarded a $5,000 grant for her project, Green Building in the Russian Context: An Investigation Into the Establishment of a LEED-based Green Building Rating System in the Russian Federation (RF). This project addresses how to reshape a resource-intensive building industry in the RF into a more environmentally and socially sustainable one by analyzing whether the RF could adopt an existing green building rating system like LEED that would encourage sustainable practices. LEED is a voluntary, market-based certification system that has been found viable in non-U.S. contexts.

The Teresa Heinz Scholars for Environmental Research Program seeks to enrich the public's understanding of emerging environmental issues and to provide effective solutions for environmental problems. It is designed to support doctoral dissertations and master's theses for research on emerging environmental issues. Research must have public policy relevance that increases society's understanding of environmental problems and their solutions.

Proposals for the Theresa and H. John Heinz III Foundation grants were submitted through the Cornell Center for the Environment and were selected by a review committee of scientists and environmentalists for their potential to address the world's most pressing environmental challenges.