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Professor picked to lead UI’s sustainability-focused research arm | University-illinois

CHAMPAIGN — An environmental economics professor has been named the director of the University of Illinois Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment.

Madhu Khanna, who has served in the role on an interim basis since 2020, will become the institute’s permanent director on July 16, pending UI trustees’ approval.

According to the UI’s top research administrator, Khanna’s time leading the university’s sustainability-focused research arm has made an impact.

“Dr. Khanna’s vision for iSEE is remarkable, and she’s put that vision into action. Because of iSEE, the university is a national leader in sustainability,” said Susan Martinis, UI vice chancellor for research and innovation.

“The institute has helped bring in some of the university’s most innovative and important research projects, and iSEE has also established, through partnership with academic units, a campuswide sustainability fellows minor as well as an undergraduate certificate in environmental writing.”

Khanna joined the UI in 1995. Her academic work focuses on what motivates producers to adopt new technologies to meet modern food and fuel demands.

She co-edited two volumes of the Handbook of Bioenergy Economics and Policy, in 2010 and 2017, and has served on the Science Advisory Board of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Khanna will be the institute’s second permanent director, succeeding Evan DeLucia.

iSEE, founded in December 2013, has led the development of the UI’s two Illinois Climate Action Plans, which have established the campus goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 or sooner.

The institute has amassed more than $175 million in outside funding for its affiliated research projects. Much of its research concerns bioenergy crops, including the $115 million Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation and SMARTFARM projects, sponsored by the Department of Energy.

There’s also the upcoming 80-acre “Farm of the Future,” run with some of the latest digital agriculture technology, funded through a three-year, $3.9 million grant from the USDA.

“I am delighted to lead iSEE to foster broad participation in interdisciplinary research in sustainability on campus to tackle some of the most wicked sustainability challenges that confront us in the 21st century as well as to offer opportunities for students to develop environmental leadership skills,” Khanna said.

“We aim to position campus to play a transformative role in moving us all to a more sustainable future.”

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