The world is more complex, interconnected, and uncertain than ever before. The future of our planet, the health of our society, and the welfare of its seven billion inhabitants will require creative solutions that balance resources, environment, health, and economy. Sustainable paths forward will require collective, non-partisan action coupled with the ability to see the world and all its components as fully interdependent.
The EEPS department is growing in new and exciting areas. Our research programs are geared toward providing a holistic systems-based understanding of Earth, its environment, and our place in the solar system. We are focused on how the ocean, atmosphere, biosphere, and deep Earth interact with each other to yield a habitable planet. Our researchers work with complex datasets that span a vast array of processes, length scales and time scales, which can allow us to make predictions about the future of our planet and design solutions to help overcome environmental and climatic challenges that we face today.
What we are doing:
- Identifying and developing science-based solutions to the world’s most pressing problems through the lens of whole Earth systems science.
- Training the next generation of scientists how to work within complex interacting systems and develop projects that lead to deeper understanding of the Earth and its environment:
- Engaging in interdisciplinary research across the Rice campus, neighboring institutions, organizations and industries, while participating in meaningful dialogs with the broader community.
- Establishment of an industry-academia workshop called the Industry Rice Earth Science (IRESS) Symposia, which has opened dialogs with leaders across industry, business, government and academia.
- Development of Rice Centers that bring researchers together in the areas of Geothermal Energy and Energy Transition, as well as Planetary Habitability.
Contribute to Human Impacts on the Earth!
The above link will take you to the EEPS Endowment support page. Use the drop down list to select Human Impacts for the Earth endowment .
Help the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences provide unique educational, research and field experiences and opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students studying Earth processes, with a particular focus on understanding human impacts on Earth’s habitability. Projects and programs addressing the past and present state of Earth’s surface, subsurface, oceans, atmosphere, and climate contribute to our understanding of Earth’s future environment, hazards, and resources, which affect us all. The department works with Houston’s energy, medical, chemical and space sectors to train the next generation of undergraduate and graduate students in complex systems thinking about Earth, environment, and planetary sciences. We will pursue environmental grand challenges facing Houston and the Gulf Coast. Join us on this exciting journey of learning about our planet and making it more habitable.
To kickstart this effort, Mary Anne and William Dingus (BA ’81) formalized a challenge gift to the department to help establish an endowment called Human Impacts on the Earth. Their gift will match any donation or pledge of $2,500 to the fund. We are grateful for this generous gift and we hope you might consider contributing to this endowment or getting involved with the department by providing advice, helping our students, and more.
“We hope you can help with this effort to quantify our impact on the planet. After all, we can’t fix what we don’t understand.” – Mary Anne and Bill Dingus ’81
For questions or if you would like to discuss developing new opportunities, please contact EEPS Department Chair Julia Morgan (morganj@rice.edu) or Jackie Macha (jackie.macha@rice.edu) Director of Development, Wiess School of Natural Sciences Office