SRI Research Fellowship

The Sustainability Research Initiative (SRI) Fellowship serves as an intellectual incubator for CU Boulder researchers. This year-long journey moves through phases of community building, visioning, and skill sharing. Fellows engage in structured monthly seminars, retreats, and team science sessions designed to translate bold ideas into transdisciplinary research and real world applications.

About the Fellowship

In fall 2025, SRI conducted focus groups with sustainability researchers across campus to understand both opportunities and barriers within CU Boulder’s research ecosystem. A resounding theme emerged: researchers are eager to collaborate across disciplines, but institutional structures make that collaboration challenging.

The SRI Research Fellowship is built on a simple premise: when talented people are given the space, time, and community to dream big together, transformative ideas emerge. Sustainability challenges are complex and multidimensional, and addressing them requires intellectual approaches that cross boundaries, challenge assumptions, and leverage diverse perspectives.This fellowship is designed to cultivate exactly that environment.

A cohort of fellows will spend the year building community, practicing future-oriented thinking, and forming transdisciplinary teams capable of shaping the next generation of sustainability scholarship and solutions. Our aim is to foster a space where serendipity can seed new ideas and collaborations and where researchers feel supported to explore bold, unconventional approaches.

The program aligns with CU Boulder’s strong campus-wide commitment to sustainability, and will help elevate and connect CU’s sustainability researchers in creative and unexpected ways.

Who Should Apply?

The fellowship is open to CU Boulder researchers, including tenure-track and tenured faculty, research and teaching faculty, and staff who:

• Work on or would like to engage with sustainability-related challenges
• Are eager to transcend disciplinary boundaries
• Value collaborative and creative thinking
• Seek to contribute to a strong, engaged community of practice
• Approach research with curiosity and epistemic humility

We welcome applicants who are both established and emerging sustainability scholars.

Goals

• Break down academic silos to coalesce researchers from across the university into enduring, collaborative teams.
• Use visioning and facilitated exploration to move beyond traditional research boundaries.
• Leverage our diverse research strengths to co-create projects that address real world challenges through both academic and creative expression.
• Elevate sustainability researchers by helping them bridge their work in novel ways with both internal peers and external partners.

We Invite You to Join Us

If you are excited to build community, stretch your thinking, and play a part in shaping a new model for sustainability research at CU Boulder, we warmly encourage you to apply. Please reach out to SRI director Dr. Jane Zelikova with any questions zelikova@colorado.edu 

Together, we can catalyze the creativity, collaboration, and collective insight needed to meet the sustainability challenges of our time.