USC Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability

Build a Better Future with Us

Together, Wrigley Institute students, faculty, and staff are creating a more sustainable and environmentally just future for our planet and all who live on it. Join us in our mission.

composite of a photo of students using a redlight to look at a seawater sample at night, a diver collecting coral samples from a reef, and a faculty member showing a student how to use a lab scale

See who we are and what we do

Graduate student Thabassum Ahammad, wearing special safety goggles, lifts the lid on a metal box as light from a green laser glows from inside.

Solutions-Focused Research

two students, one wearing a USC sweatshirt and baseball cap and flashing a

Undergraduate and Graduate Education

students look at AI-generated climate art set up on easels in an outdoor courtyard

Events and Public Engagement

Training for Tomorrow

Students in our bachelor’s and master’s degree programs learn to view environment and sustainability challenges with fresh eyes, harnessing an interdisciplinary perspective to develop novel, world-changing solutions to big problems.

Learn more about Environmental Studies

“The classes I took in the Environmental Studies Program were some of my most inspiring at USC. They really solidified my passion and equipped me for working in this area.”

Forrest Lee ’19, USC environmental studies alumn and development manager, Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator

Environmental Studies alumn works to enable cleantech entrepreneurship

Watch an interview with Forrest

Forrest Lee, wearing a tan jacket and black polo shirt, talks with a coworker in front of a wall of green plants

World-Class Sustainability Research

Our affiliated faculty are tracking the state of our planet, creating workable solutions to big challenges, and transforming the way society thinks and acts on the environment.

Learn more about faculty research

“Reefs provide so many essential services: they’re biodiversity hotspots, sources of new medicines, natural breakwaters that protect coastal communities, and major economic hubs. My lab is working toward solutions to help reefs hang on.”

Carly Kenkel, biology professor and Wrigley Institute Faculty Innovation Award winner

Warming events devastate corals, but we can help save them

Read about Kenkel’s research

a group of small, neon yellow fish with electric blue stripes huddle around the base of a spiky, orange-red staghorn coral on a sandy ocean bottom

A hilltop view of the Wrigley Institute on Catalina Island

Wrigley Marine Science Center on Catalina Island

Our one-of-a-kind satellite campus and living lab on Catalina Island offers environment and sustainability researchers and students the unique opportunity to investigate a pristine natural environment just 22 miles off the coast of the nation’s second-largest city.

Plan your visit to WMSC