New Global Collaborative Networks Fund projects selected

Princeton University's Council for International Teaching and Research has selected two faculty proposals -- one focused on hydrology and food security, and another on analytic philosophy -- to receive funding for the creation of new global research initiatives.

The projects will be supported by the Princeton Global Collaborative Networks Fund (formerly the Global Collaborative Research Fund), which facilitates international scholarly networks that enable Princeton to engage with centers of learning worldwide. The two new research networks will begin in fall 2011. The grants total $450,000 over a three-year period.
 
The newly selected projects and their coordinating faculty members are:

Coupling Hydrological Forecasts and Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa and China (Kelly Caylor, Justin Sheffield and Eric Wood, civil and environmental engineering). This initiative will bring together university scholars, nongovernmental researchers and government scientists from the United States, Africa, China and Europe to explore issues related to how food security is affected by rainfall variability and by human- or climate-induced land and water degradation. The goals of the project are to identify potential hydrological forecast models to be incorporated into operational decision-making in sub-Saharan Africa and China; to develop core research sites across these two regions; and to establish a network of policy experts, practitioners and science experts to study future patterns and trajectories of food security within the developing world through the year 2050.

Cooperative Research Network in Analytic Philosophy (Daniel Garber, philosophy).
This project aims to establish a joint institute of Princeton, the Australian National University, the University of Oxford and the Institut Jean-Nicod in Paris for research in analytic philosophy, incorporating areas such as epistemology, metaphysics and value theory. The initiative will include exchanges of faculty and students, joint research seminars and projects, conferences, and lectures. The network is modeled after a partnership between Princeton's Department of Mathematics and institutions in China, Germany, the United Kingdom, Israel and Russia that was supported by the first round of Global Collaborative Network Fund grants announced in 2009.

The Global Collaborative Networks Fund, now in its third year, allocates grants to sustain collaborative initiatives of significant global scholarship and to promote career development of scholars at all stages with the purpose of enhancing Princeton scholars' participation in global research. The fund is part of a series of international initiatives outlined by President Shirley M. Tilghman and Provost Christopher Eisgruber in fall 2007.

More information about the new grants is available on the Council for International Teaching and Research website.