CUNY Environmental Cross-Roads Initiative (CECI)

Welcome to CUNY Environmental Cross-Roads Initiative

The CUNY Environmental Cross-Roads Initiative creates a major focal point for experts to join forces, to dialogue, and to jointly solve the major 21st century strategic environmental challenges facing the region, the Nation, and the world. The Initiative introduces state-of-the-art scientific knowledge and environmental sensing technologies into an ongoing policy dialogue with decision-makers. Technology is used not merely as a tool but as a transformative force for environmental stewardship. The Initiative develops practical strategies for managing an Earth system capable of sustaining humans and nature over a millennial time horizon.

Created in 2008, the Cross-Roads Initiative is a nationally and internationally recognized center for environmental research, and a unique meeting grounds for science and policy experts. The Initiative pursues its mission by actively seeking out and capitalizing upon new, high impact developments in the environmental science, technology, and policy realms. The Initiative is organized around a set of pillars, constituting its intellectual foundation and addressing interdisciplinary environmental challenges of strategic concern to the Nation. While emphasis is placed on water as a key natural resource, the Initiative addresses other critical issues-- the energy-climate-carbon nexus; stimulating innovation in sensor design from nano-to-global scales; evaluating ecosystem services; next-generation digital Earth data serving.

2009 Synthesis Summer Institutes
A core activity of our effort is hosting a series of Summer Institutes where graduate students spend six weeks conducting team-based research with us. The 2008 Institute was hosted at MIT and focused on quantifying the impact of European colonization on the hydrology of the Northeast region. The 2009 installment of the Institute will be hosted at the City College of New York and will focus on the Industrial Revolution and the regional impacts to hydrology caused by the birth of industrialization.
  
In the news:
CUNY has embarked on a Decade for Science, and is devoting tangible resources to this transformation, including more than $1B in new science building construction. The Founding Director of the Cross-Roads Initiative, Professor Charles J. Vörösmarty, is the first of several strategic faculty hires as part of the CUNY Advances Science and Research Center facility, construction beginning in Fall 2008.