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The Food Systems Research Center is proud to fund talented undergraduate students to gain hands-on experience working closely with ¶¶Òõ̽̽ researchers to study impactful and pressing food systems issues relevant to Vermont. Their research encompasses the diversity of food systems research, spanning from pest control to food safety, and from the intricacies of diet culture to the significance of cover crops.

Details
Awards include a $4,500 stipend and up to $1,500 in research expenses.
Students can apply through ¶¶Òõ̽̽ FOUR – there is a common application, a budget worksheet, and faculty sponsor form,
The deadline to apply is March 1st.

Apply for Funding on the FOUR page

The Climate Kitchen Summer Research Institute

Call for Letters of Interest for Participation

Due: March 1, 2025

We are excited to announce the creation of the Climate Kitchen. The Climate Kitchen is a maker’s space dedicated to creative inquiry, done collaboratively across the food system and around the University. The Climate Kitchen will facilitate inventive practices that expand the future of sustainable food systems and improve planetary health.  The Climate Kitchen Summer Research Institute – an initiative sponsored by the Food Systems Research Center – will be held between May 20 and August 8, 2025.

If we want to stay within planetary boundaries, provide human nourishment and achieve health equity, we need to link broad, abstract goals and measures with our everyday realities and actions. Much of this work will happen in kitchens, whether domestic, professional or industrial. Why? Because kitchens are where the loftiest food and climate goals meet possibilities but also practicalities. Because here is where the products of the natural world (and possibly the laboratory world too) meet our aspirations, our traditions and our current production and distribution systems. The ideal and the real must intersect.

In the Climate Kitchen, we are comfortable with ideas that might not ever work out. Or they just might. Delicious food emerges from unexpected sources – insects, invasive species - or with new techniques – dehydrators, Instapots, tabletop flour mills. Or cool new ways to compost the less delicious food and then use the compost. Or experiments on new (hybrid mung beans?) or old (buckwheat?) foods are designed and tested.  Or new communities are integrated into initiatives to improve access to culturally appropriate and nourishing foods. Or something that we have yet to imagine. The 2025 Summer Institute will provide the tools and resources for you (and your collaborators) to explore your ideas. These can be half-baked or fully cooked. Or just a glimmer.

The requests?

That your ideas address, in some manner, at least two of our 5 tenets for a sustainable food system that are of current focus in the Climate Kitchen:

Plant Forward

A growing evidence base supports the need to shift to plant-based dietary patterns to meet planetary health goals. Plant-based diets are those that limit or omit animal-based foods and emphasize those that are plant-based (WHO, 2021).

Integrating Tastes and Habits

Numerous studies highlight the importance of accounting for cultural preferences, acceptability, heritage, traditions, and culinary practices in research on and initiatives to promote healthy and sustainable diets.

Low Waste

Approximately a third of all food produced around the globe is lost or wasted every year. This has significant and detrimental economic, environmental, and social impacts (Principato et al., 2021).

Whole Food Utilization

A circular economy offers an alternative to the current economic model of production and consumption. Rather than a take, use, and dispose approach, a circular economy is aimed at minimizing waste through reuse, recycling, sharing, repairing, and repurposing products and materials. Circular systems can reduce environmental impacts, enhance natural resources, and increase economic benefits (Hamam et al., 2021).

Regional/Local Sourcing

Local and regional foods are increasing seen and promoted as an important component of sustainable and resilient food systems (Enthoven & Van den Broeck, 2021; Stein & Santini, 2022).

That you attend a 2 and half-day workshop from May 19-21, 2025, that will take place in the Climate Kitchen/Foods Lab. Learn how to work in the lab, the ways we value emergent learning and design thinking, and how to transform a summer of creative inquiry into a research project and/or long-term collaborations that will continue. This includes an event with potential long-term Climate Kitchen Collaborators. 

That you commit to 7 more days (or equivalent) in the Climate Kitchen/Foods Lab over the summer to pursue your ideas, both in theory and in practice. (These can be all at once or spread over the summer but must be organized in consultation with the Climate Kitchen team.)

That you present to all involved in the Climate Kitchen at the end of the summer as part of a Climate Kitchen workshop (to be held in mid-late August 2024). The presentation will involve the work that took place as part of the Summer Research Institute and a proposal for future project(s).

Practicalities:

• Faculty: 1-2 weeks of summer salary (depending on overall effort)
• Graduate Students: up to 10 hours a week research pay (depending on overall effort) 
• Undergraduate students: up to 70 hours total summer employment (depending on overall effort)
• Up to $3,000 budget for equipment and up to $1,500 in supplies (the equipment will remain in the Climate Kitchen).
• Must involve at least two and up to five members of the research team. Undergraduates can be part of a team but cannot lead a team.
• One member of each team will need to serve as the Food Safety Coordinator and will need to take and pass the ServSafe Food Handler exam (coordinated and paid for by the Climate Kitchen).
• We have space for 2-4 teams, depending on their size.

Submission of letter of interest by March 1, 2025 to the Climate Kitchen team (ebarbour@uvm.edu).

Please provide the following in your letter of interest: In 750-1000 words outline the chosen focus in terms of tenets of practice, the general outlines of your inquiry and one or two potential long-term outcomes from your summer of inquiry in the Climate Kitchen. Then provide a short description of your team members and their potential roles during the inquiry process and list of any potential equipment you might want to use (this does not have to be definitive, and the total estimated cost cannot exceed $3,000). Please consult with Emily Barbour, Manager of the Climate Kitchen as to existing equipment that can be used as well as to any questions about the application process. We will contact all teams that apply for an interview between March 17-March 22 and final decisions will be made by March 25, 2025. 

The ¶¶Òõ̽̽ Food Systems Research Center (FSRC) is pleased to announce a call for applications for the 2025-2026 PhD Research Assistantships. This award is open to ¶¶Òõ̽̽ PhD candidates, and the FSRC anticipates funding up to 7 students. Applicants may request 12-24 months of funding to assist in the writing of their dissertation and completion of their PhD. Recipients will receive a 12-month stipend in the amount of $33,280. Other benefits for FSRC fellows include travel funding for workshops and/or conferences associated with their research, access to funding to cover open access publication costs, and participation in the FSRC Enrichment Series.

Please see the full announcement here:

Contact Allison.Spain@uvm.edu with any questions. Applications are due through by January 15, 2025.

The Food Systems Research Center (FSRC) is providing funding to maximize our scientific impact through open access publication charges, allowing the research results from FSRC work to be publicly available.

Eligibility and Conditions:

• Previously or currently funded FSRC projects and people are eligible (funded either under the CA 59-8062-9-009 AWD 34853 or the NACA 58-8090-2-002 AWD1102). 
• Open access charges will be available for fully open access journals (i.e. where the entire journal is open access).  An exemption may be requested for open access charge for hybrid journals, but require additional information (see below).
• The FSRC will fund a maximum amount of three thousand dollars ($3,000) per request.  An individual cannot request more than six thousand dollars ($6,000) total from the fund, as first or corresponding author.
• Any funding received should be acknowledged in the funding section of your publication.  This information will be provided to you if your publication is provided funding.
• All funding is first come/first serve until the funds have been fully expended.