Research Centers

The Building Science Group launched the Cluster for Sustainability in the Built Environment at the University of Maryland (CITY@UMD). The Cluster’s mission is to understand the fundamental principals of build infrastructure’s impact on energy consumption, environmental quality, and the population well-being. This understanding enables the creation and management of healthy urban ecosystems.

The Center for Disaster Resilience takes a multidisciplinary approach to hazards, integrating our understanding of the hazards themselves with the social contexts in which they occur to improve preparedness and response.

The Center for Environmental Energy Engineering is a leader in research and education in environmentally responsible, economically feasible distributed energy conversion systems for buildings and transportation. CEEE provides innovative solutions to industry's research and development challenges and cost-effective, timely technology transfer. Researchers have developed a highly flexible and task-oriented consortium structure that emphasizes pre-competitive research. Sponsors include industrial companies and government agencies that pool research funds leveraged by additional support from the University of Maryland.

The Center for Global Sustainability informs global, national, and local discussions on climate, energy, economic development, and sustainability. The center is a part of the School of Public Policy. The Center coordinated the Global Sustainability Initiative, a cross-disciplinary, campus wide project focused on near-term steps toward long-term sustainability goals.

The Center for Materials Innovation (CMI) is a multidisciplinary research center that encourages collaborative effort between the University of Maryland and other academic, government, and industrial partners to invent, manufacture, and utilize innovative materials that can address society’s most pressing issues. The research covers a broad range of interests, including nature-inspired materials for sustainability, emerging catalysts, next-generation batteries, extreme processing and manufacturing, system integrations, and life cycling assessments.

Center for Risk and Reliability (CRR) is an umbrella organization for safety, risk, and reliability research at the Clark School. It covers applications to complex structure, systems and processes used in space, defense, civil aviation, nuclear energy, petroleum, medical device, information systems, and civil infrastructures. CRR is the research arm of the Reliability Engineering Educational program—the largest and most comprehensive M.S. and Ph.D. degree granting program in the world. As an umbrella organization CRR draws expertise from the Clark School’s various departments and offers cutting edge research on methods and tools. It provides research leadership in the development of fundamental risk and reliability science and new frontiers in safety, security, risk and reliability studies that includes applications of risk management, prognostics and health management of complex systems and structure and resilience engineering.

The Center for Social Value Creation innovates at the intersection of public policy, non-governmental organizations and the commercial sector to address social market failures. It offers students an educational core competency for exploring and solving the business model issues that currently limit organizations in their pursuit to do well by doing good. Their mission is to develop global leaders and nurture enterprises that address world challenges through social innovation, economic prosperity, and sustainable change. The center has three primary areas of focus: Social Entrepreneurship, Environmental Sustainability, and Business Model Innovation.

The Colvin Institute of Real Estate Development supports the interdisciplinary approach of Maryland’s Master of Real Estate Development (MRED) curriculum that comprehensively covers finance and capital markets, law and public policy, structure and site design, construction management, property, portfolio and asset management, as well as marketing and commercial leasing. The MRED degree offers a comprehensive and collaborative approach to real estate education that envisions a sustainable future with an emphasis on the quadruple bottom line: development that is not only financially viable, but also environmentally respectful, socially responsible, and with a key 21st-century focus on beautiful and sustainable design.

The CEEJH laboratory’s primary focus is to provide engagement to highly and differentially exposed populations and underserved communities. CEEJH was founded by Dr. Sacoby Wilson, associate professor in the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, in the Fall 2011.

The mission of CONSERVE is to facilitate the adoption of transformative on‐farm treatment solutions that enable the safe use of nontraditional irrigation water on food crops. A comprehensive team of researchers and educators collaborate across disciplines, schools, and state boundaries. CONSERVE is led by a transdisciplinary team engaged in research, extension and education in the Mid‐Atlantic and Southwest with the goal of moving the science and policy of water reuse forward. 

The Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center is a joint center between the University of Maryland Departments of Atmospheric & Oceanic Science, Geology, Geography, and the Earth Sciences Directorate at the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. ESSIC also administers the Cooperative Institute for Climate Studies (CICS), jointly with the NOAA National Satellite, Data, and Information Services (NESDIS) and the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). The goal of ESSIC is to enhance our understanding of how the atmosphere, ocean, land, and biosphere components of the Earth interact as a coupled system and the influence of human activities on this system. This is accomplished via studies of the interaction between the physical climate system (e.g., El Nino) and biogeochemical cycles (e.g., greenhouse gases, changes in land use and cover).

The Environmental Finance Center (EFC) at the University of Maryland is one of nine University-based centers across the country providing communities with the tools and information necessary to manage change for a healthy environment and an enhanced quality of life. EFC believes that environmental finance can be used to develop a shared community vision. Our focus is protecting natural resources and watersheds by strengthening the capacity of local decision-makers to analyze environmental problems, develop innovative and effective methods of financing environmental efforts and educate communities about the role of finance and economic development in the protection of the environment.

The Institute for Systems Research has contributed to advances in batteries, including a tobacco mosaic virus scaffold battery with high surface area and capacity, high-powered nanostructured 3D microbatteries, and carbon nanotube current collectors for aqueous battery systems. Wireless devices that operate with energy harvested from the environment have been created, and advances have been made in power electronics that convert electricity from one form to another for more electric aircraft, electric vehicles and solar power. In addition, ISR modeling advances the understanding of energy markets.

The Joint Global Change Research Institute houses an interdisciplinary team dedicated to understanding the problems of global climate change and their potential solutions. Joint Institute staff bring decades of experience and expertise to bear in science, technology, economics, and policy. One of the strengths of the Joint Institute is a network of domestic and international collaborators that encourages the development of global and equitable solutions to the climate change problem. Initiated in early 2001, the Joint Institute brings together the intersecting interests of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Maryland. Staff at the Joint Institute are focused on developing new opportunities to train University students in these interdisciplinary areas.

The Maryland Energy Innovation Institute provides a platform to catalyze basic research into new technology while stimulating economic growth and improving millions of lives across the state of Maryland. The Institute brings together science, industry, government and economic leaders to develop new energy technologies and facilitate the transfer of technology ideas into a reality. Through this truly interdisciplinary team, the institute develops solutions to global and local energy problems (i.e. cleaner and renewable energy solutions; more efficient use and storage of energy) and assists the transfer of knowledge and resources to the public in addition to transitioning the research into marketable products and services through locally based entrepreneurial ventures.

The Maryland Water Resources Research Center was established in 1965 to develop new technology and more efficient methods for resolving local, state and national water resources problems. In addition to supporting research, its mission includes training water scientists and engineers and disseminating information to the public. Comparable centers exist in every state, usually at the principal Land Grant University.

The National Center for Smart Growth is a non-partisan center for research and leadership training on Smart Growth and related land use issues nationally and internationally. Founded in 2000, the Center is a cooperative venture of five University of Maryland schools: Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Public Policy, Agriculture and Natural Resources, and Engineering. The mission of the Center is to bring the diverse resources of the University of Maryland and a network of national experts to bear on issues in land development, resource preservation and urban growth — the nature of our communities, our landscape and our quality of life — through interdisciplinary research, outreach and education, thereby establishing the University as the national leader in this field.

The University of Maryland established the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SeSynC) in 2011 with a $27.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation. It is one of the few research centers in the United States that is transdisciplinary, studying large-scale environmental issues. Through its efforts, SeSynC has brought different stakeholders and research fields together, learning more about the interactions between human and ecological systems. The research center has gathered and synthesized research solutions for clean water, sustainable food production, and more.

The Public Health Outcomes and Effects of the Built Environment (PHOEBE) Laboratory mission is to gain an improved understanding of how built environments — or rather the man-made places and spaces of neighborhoods and communities, such as buildings, parks, and transportation systems, — can impact the health and well-being of individuals of all ages.  More specifically, the laboratory examines environmental factors that encourage or discourage all domains of physical activity (e.g. recreational, transportation, household, occupational) and how these factors may be associated with physical (e.g. obesity) and mental (e.g. depression) public health outcomes among adults, adolescents and children.

The Stormwater Infrastructure Resilience and Justice (SIRJ) Lab at the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at the University of Maryland was established in 2019 under the leadership of Dr. Marccus Hendricks, PhD, MPH. The SIRJ lab studies everyday urban stormwater management and extreme events such as urban flooding, and investigates the socio-spatial dynamics related to the inventory, condition, and distribution of critical infrastructures and public works, mainly water infrastructure (i.e. stormwater, wastewater, and drinking water) and green space. 

The University of Maryland Energy Research Centers are affiliated with the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute (MEII). These research centers are dedicated to advancing the frontiers of energy science and technology, with a special focus on forward-looking approaches for alternative energy generation and storage. Featured energy centers include:

• Center for Materials Innovation
• Center for Research in Extreme Batteries
• Center for Environmental Energy Engineering
• Nanostructures for Electric Energy Storage (NEES)
• Center for Advanced Renewable Biomaterials (CARB)
• Maryland Transportation Institute
• Center for Sustainability in the Built Environment

The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science leads the way toward better management of Maryland’s natural resources and the protection and restoration of the Chesapeake Bay. From a network of laboratories located across the state, their scientists provide sound advice to help state and national leaders manage the environment and prepare future scientists to meet the global challenges of the 21st century. 

The Maryland Transportation Institute is a catalyst for high-caliber transportation research, innovation, and technology transfer. With internationally leading experts in engineering, planning, data science, human computer interaction, logistics, social sciences, public policy, public health, and sustainability, the institute is uniquely positioned to unearth solutions to society’s greatest transportation challenges and fuel community and economic development.