By 2030, Dhaka, Bangladesh is projected to experience dramatic increases in flooding and an average of 65 days per year of extreme heat. There are over 3,000 apparel factories in Bangladesh, whose workers and production are increasingly threatened by climate change, in the form of the high temperatures and extreme flooding.

“Climate change is already negatively impacting worker livelihoods and industry sustainability,” said Sarosh Kuruvilla, the Andrew J. Nathanson Family Professor in Industrial and Labor Relations in the ILR School. “The global fashion industry urgently needs to adapt, to protect worker health and long-term earnings.”

With support from the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, Kuruvilla and Jason Judd, executive director of the ILR School’s Global Labor Institute, are leading a project to test and estimate costs of factory-level heat interventions. They’ll collaborate with a multidisciplinary team and five apparel factories in Bangladesh to identify the technical and financial implications of physical interventions like cooling and flood defense, and labor-supportive adaptations like changing work hours and ensuring hydration and sick leave.

The project is one of six recipients of this year’s Academic Venture Fund (AVF) awards from Cornell Atkinson. The new AVF awards support interdisciplinary research on protecting food supplies, the climate, sustainable energy production and human and planetary health. Since Atkinson Center’s founding 15 years ago, AVF awards have distributed $21.7 million to 223 projects spanning every college on Cornell’s campus.

“We at Cornell Atkinson are interested in creating financially sustainable, scalable solutions to the great sustainability challenges of the world,” said David Lodge, the Professor Francis J. DiSalvo Director of Cornell Atkinson. “Academic Venture Fund awards are a big piece of our efforts to integrate Cornell research into a virtuous cycle of innovations among research, policy and markets, all in support of the public good.”

The other 2025 awards are:

AI-aided drilling for deep geothermal development

For over 15 years, a multidisciplinary team of Cornell researchers has been studying the potential for developing a deep geothermal system to heat the university’s Ithaca campus. To support that goal, this project will develop an algorithm to optimize the alignment of the lateral wells that would be drilled in a deep geothermal system. Rapid, data-informed well designs would increase the economic potential of enhanced geothermal systems.

Investigators: Chloé Arson, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences in Cornell Engineering and Yunan Yang, Goenka Family Assistant Professor in Mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S).

Avian influenza at the wild-domestic interface

In collaboration with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and state agencies, this project aims to identify highly pathogenic avian influenza transmission chains between wildlife and livestock and develop improved surveillance and biosecurity guidelines and policies. This will allow researchers to better characterize species-specific roles in transmission and identify opportunities for targeted interventions.

Investigators: In the College of Veterinary Medicine’s (CVM) Department of Public and Ecosystem Health: Dr. Amandine Gamble, assistant professor; Ana Bento, assistant professor; Dr. Kevin Cummings, professor; Charley Willison, assistant professor; Jarra Jagne, professor of practice; and Dr. Jennifer Bloodgood, assistant professor of practice. And in CVM’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology: Kheila Dhondt, senior lecturer.

Reducing extreme-heat deaths by enhancing disaster scenarios, training

This project aims to enhance preparedness for extreme heat by developing disaster scenarios and training programs for the public health and emergency management practitioners on the front lines of protecting communities. Researchers will address low hazard perception, lack of training and location-specific data, and understaffing to create credible extreme-heat disaster scenarios, raising awareness of the nationwide severity of the hazard.

Investigators: Alistair Hayden, assistant professor of practice of public and ecosystem health (CVM); Toby Ault, associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), Vivek Srikrishnan, assistant professor of biological and environmental engineering (CALS); and Gen Meredith, associate professor public and ecosystem health (CVM).

AI-powered reprocessing, regrading and recertification of salvage lumber

This project – AR3-Lumber – will convene experts from industry and academia to develop and validate a scalable, AI-driven system for visual grading and reuse of reclaimed lumber in high-performance structural applications. AR3-Lumber promotes a more efficient approach to reclaimed wood processing and bridges the gap between circular economy principles and practical industry application.

Investigators: Felix Heisel, assistant professor of architecture in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP); Steve Marschner, professor computer science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science (Cornell Bowers); and Matthew Reiter, professor of practice of civil and environmental engineering in Cornell Engineering.

Redirecting nutrients from the lake to the land in New York and Kenya

This project will pilot products that safely use human waste to enrich agricultural soils, in a system known as bionutrient circularity, in Ithaca, New York, and Kisuma, Kenya. Using nutrients from urine and carbon in the forms of biochar and compost, researchers seek to develop and market excreta-based fertilizers to improve livelihoods, food security and environmental health.

Investigators: Rebecca Nelson, professor of plant pathology and plant-microbe biology (CALS); Andrew Bell, the Schleifer Family Associate Professor of Sustainability (CALS); David Goldberg, associate professor of operations research and information engineering (Engineering); Kurt Waldman, assistant professor of global development (CALS); and Johannes Lehmann, Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of soil and crop sciences, and professor of global development (CALS).

Krisy Gashler is a writer for Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.