Institute for a Sustainable Earth (ISE)

Mason students are taking pictures of the campus flora, fauna, and fungi with their smartphones—sometimes in the dark—to capture the university’s biodiversity. They are trying to record as many species as possible in this fall's Bioblitz 2023, which continues through Nov. 19.

The new Virginia Climate Center (VCC) at Mason is leading research on tackling climate-related challenges, such as energy, vector-borne illnesses, and extreme weather and flooding in Northern Virginia and throughout the commonwealth.

The National Science Foundation's Navigating the New Arctic researchers traveled to a remote location to attend the Permafrost and Infrastructure Symposium in Utqiaġvik, Alaska, some 320 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

Mason is deeply committed to pioneering processes that can answer the grand challenges of water, its responsible management, and sustainability. In fact, the university’s interdisciplinary approach and cutting-edge research as part of its strategic direction, has turned Mason’s campuses into a Living Lab.

Green isn’t just a school color at George Mason University. At Mason, “green” is way of life, and sustainability is central to the university’s mission.

A Mason professor is the sole academic working with the U.S. government in an unprecedented effort to measure environmental-economic activity.

The project, “A study on the ultrahigh salt adsorption capacity of an energy-efficiency water desalination technology,” was supported by a 4-VA@Mason Collaborative Research Grant with the goal of designing next-generation electrode materials to advance the energy-efficient CDI technology.

Mason graduate student’s cherry blossom monitoring research uses Mason as a living lab to assess how climate change affects the bloom date of cherry blossom trees on the Fairfax Campus.

Since 2019, George Mason University’s Business for a Better World Center (B4BW) has led the university’s contribution to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) North America chapter.

Mason graduate students helped the environment, nonprofit organizations and the local community with summer projects through the Sustainability Summer Graduate Research Fellowships. This summer marked the first time Mason’s Institute for a Sustainable Earth (ISE) has offered the fellowship program.