Wrigley Institute names 2026 Faculty Innovation Award winners
The Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability (WIES) has named its 2026-2028 cohort of Faculty Innovation Award winners. The awards, worth up to $50,000 each, support original, solutions-focused environmental and sustainability research by USC faculty from any discipline.
This year’s awarded projects cover a range of topics, including nitrogen fixation, carbon capture and storage, kelp forest resilience, fuel cell technology, and the impacts of El Niño. Three of the researchers in the cohort are receiving grants under WIES’s Climate and Carbon Management Initiative, which focuses on tracking and reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
“Research universities like USC are a crucial proving ground for novel solutions to environmental and sustainability challenges,” says Wrigley Institute Executive Director Jessica Dutton. “Our Faculty Innovation Awards are designed to help make early-stage investigations of these solutions possible.”
2026-2028 Faculty Innovation Award Winners
Dean’s Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Chemistry, and Biological Sciences
Project: “Rational Design of Mutualistic Microbial Consortia for Energy-Neutral Decarbonization of Wastewater Treatment” (Funded by the Lott Foundation)
Wastewater treatment is an energy-intensive process that adds measurably to global greenhouse emissions. One option for making the process more sustainable: fuel cells made from electrically active bacteria found within the sewage sludge. However, because of variations and vulnerabilities in onsite microbial communities, their performance as power generators is often unpredictable. Moh El-Naggar’s project seeks to improve on existing solutions by engineering fuel cells using a mix of interacting bacteria, thus increasing the technology’s reliability and scalability.
Professor of Earth Sciences
Project: “Wood burial at sea – climate and carbon implications” (Funded through the Wrigley Institute Climate and Carbon Management Initiative)
During the Messinian geologic age (5-7 million years ago), Iberian rivers carried fallen trees to the Mediterranean’s Alborán Sea, where the wood was buried deep in ocean sediments. This process slowed the trees’ decay and has prevented much of their stored carbon from reaching the atmosphere. Through her project, Sarah Feakins aims to quantify how much carbon was sequestered in this way. She also hopes to use the results to inform conversations around carbon storage today, including whether intentionally burying wood at sea could help meaningfully reduce our planet’s overall greenhouse gas emissions.
Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
Project: “Who fixes the nitrogen that captures the carbon? Organism-resolved characterization of diazotroph activity in the South Pacific” (Funded through the Wrigley Institute Climate and Carbon Management Initiative)
Nitrogen-fixing plankton are a crucial part of the ocean’s carbon-storage system. Some of these plankton feed on iron, and USC’s Growing Oceans initiative is investigating whether adding iron to the ocean could help increase its carbon-storage capacity. Noelle Held’s project supports these investigations by studying naturally occurring colonies of iron-loving plankton in the South Pacific. Her goal is to identify exactly which plankton species are doing the nitrogen fixation, so that iron-enrichment studies can be targeted in the right direction.
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences and Quantitative and Computational Biology
Project: “How Microbial Interactions Shape the Microscopic Foundations of Kelp Forests” (Funded by the Peregrine Award)
Over the last few decades, ocean warming and other factors have wiped out large swaths of the Pacific Ocean’s kelp forest. To preserve and restore this crucial ecosystem, scientists need a better understanding of how kelp develop and what factors affect its physical growth. One gap in this understanding: the role of kelp’s microbiome. Through her project, Julia Schwartzman will study the effects of microbes living on giant Pacific kelp in its early, microscopic stages of development. Her goal is to shine a light on ways to improve kelp’s health and resilience at a life stage that is critical to its population spread and reproductivity.
Professor of Biological Sciences
Project: “Studying the impact of El Niño on marine nitrogen fixation in the North Pacific Ocean” (Funded by the Seaver Institute)
Cyanobacteria found in the ocean are a crucial part of the planet’s nitrogen-fixation system. Existing models show that marine-based nitrogen fixation may decrease by as much as 50% as the ocean warms, but recent discoveries have identified heat-adapted cyanobacteria that may help bridge this gap. With an exceptionally strong El Niño currently forming in the Pacific Ocean, Eric Webb’s project will track the impact of this warming event on the heat-adapted bacteria and their nitrogen-fixing abilities. The results will help us predict and prepare for the long-term effects of climate change on a process that is central to life on Earth.
Professor of Earth Sciences and Environmental Studies
Paxson H. Offield Professor in Coastal and Marine Systems and Professor of Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies, and Spatial Sciences
Project: “Exploring biotic catalysts of enhanced olivine weathering in seawater” (Funded through the Wrigley Institute Climate and Carbon Management Initiative)
As rocks weather, the elements they release react with the carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere to pull CO2 out of the air and lock it away inside new compounds. Through enhanced rock weathering, a process that involves crushing rocks so they they react more quickly with CO2, we may be able to remove significant amounts of carbon from our atmosphere. Josh West and Will Berelson’s project will test biotic catalysts, such as seaweed-based polymers, for their effectiveness as weathering agents on the silicate mineral olivine, which can be placed along coastlines to be absorbed into the ocean. They also aim to quantify the amount of CO2 that could be captured and stored by this process, to help determine whether particular catalysts and the overall method are suitable for large-scale use.
Learn more about current Wrigley Institute research projects >>
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Learn more about the Climate and Carbon Management Initiative >>