A new $15 million gift to the Resnick Sustainability Institute at Caltech will help scientists and engineers advance research aimed at helping humanity sustainably meet its needs for energy, food, clean water, and a healthy environment. This brings total funding of the Institute to nearly $60 million.

$3 million of the gift launches the Resnick Institute Innovation Fund, which will support new ideas in clean energy and sustainability science that have the potential for rapid impact. The fund will initially focus on two programs. The first is the newly launched Resonate Awards program, which will honor creative breakthroughs in energy and sustainability science made by early-career scholars worldwide. The second, a postdoctoral scholar program offering distinguished fellowships, will help bring particularly outstanding young leaders in energy and sustainability research to Caltech to create a corps of top innovators who will have the freedom to focus exclusively on research.

Since its founding, the Resnick Sustainability Institute’s researchers have pursued wide-ranging investigations in energy science and technology. Support from the Institute has enabled advances in distributed wind-energy systems, batteries and fuel cells, smart grid systems, record-breaking solar photovoltaics, pioneering technologies for deriving fuels from sunlight, and chemical catalysts that convert waste materials to biofuels.

“The toughest issues in sustainability are not short-term, two- or three-year problems,” says Harry A. Atwater, Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science and director of the Resnick Sustainability Institute. “They require a 50-year view and need to be approached with creativity and a transformative perspective.

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