When President Domenico Grasso announced the $1 billion, 10-year Strategic Initiative Fund (SIF) in November, he encouraged University of Michigan faculty and staff to push the limits of their creativity and ambitions in designing projects that could change the world.
The inaugural open SIF call gave the U-M community the opportunity to submit their ideas for a portion of SIF resources.
The community responded with nearly 500 ideas to improve human health, strengthen communities, and build a more sustainable world.
On Aug. 26, the university announced 37 projects that will receive $40 million in initial funding to pursue those bold ideas.
"The university is making a deliberate and sustained financial commitment to invest in the ideas, people and partnerships that will shape our future and achieve our vision," Grasso said. "And these initiatives will ensure that Michigan continues to distinguish itself as a place where bold ideas deliver lasting impact."
To be considered for funding, each proposal had to align with one or more of the five impact areas identified in the Look to Michigan vision and encourage collaboration from scholars and staff across academic departments, university campuses and multiple colleges, schools and units.
"These initiatives reflect the University of Michigan's academic mission at its best — advancing discovery, enriching education, and bringing people together across disciplines to pursue questions that matter," said Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Laurie McCauley. "We are supporting work that strengthens our core commitments to knowledge, learning, and service."
The Center for Democracy & Civic Empowerment, as an example, will study local and global democracies and create opportunities for students to learn more about how democracies are built and sustained. Led by Jenna Bednar, a professor of political science in the Ford School of Public Policy, the center will also create online modules, graphic novels, pop-up events and other programming to encourage people worldwide to participate in democracies.
To ensure that the center has impact, Bednar included experts in the project from LSA; School of Information; Wallace House Center for Journalists; U-M Museum of Art; Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning; Marsal Family School of Education; Institute for Social Research; Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy; and Center for Emerging Democracies. A 12-member board of students will also guide the programming.
Other funded projects affiliated with the Ford School include:
Detroit Metro Area Communities Study (DMACS): Led by Mara Ostfeld and Sharon Sand, DMACS will expand into a Detroit-centered civic data platform-shared infrastructure that provides reliable, timely, and representative information to residents, community organizations, funders, and policymakers, and enable more robust, coordinated engagement across the University of Michigan. Since 2016, DMACS has been cited in more than 500 media stories, used in over 40 peer-reviewed articles, and partnered with more than 25 U-M departments and 20 Detroit-based organizations. Its findings have helped inform major civic investments, including a $12 million commitment to the Detroit Eviction Defense Fund.
With support from the Strategic Initiative Fund and in partnership with community organizations and collaborators across the University of Michigan, DMACS will amplify community voices and translate rigorous research into actionable public knowledge that informs decision-making and strengthens civic engagement.
Monitoring Food Hardship in the U.S.: Led by Helen Levy and Natasha Pilkauskas, this project will collect monthly data on food insufficiency from a national sample of U.S. households. U-M will release quarterly issue briefs tracking the rate of food insufficiency overall and for key subgroups such as households with children and households with seniors, and will make the underlying microdata publicly available at no cost to users.
This work comes at a moment when a federal survey of household food security that had run annually for thirty years was recently cancelled, leaving a gap in the ability to track food-related hardship in the U.S. against a backdrop of rising prices, cuts to welfare programs, and pervasive economic uncertainty. The project aims to partially fill that gap, giving researchers and the public a continued, up-to-date picture of how vulnerable families are faring. Read more about the project here.
Michigan Automotive, Grid, and Energy Transition Initiative (MAGNET): Catie Hausman is part of a cross-campus initiative that addresses one of the most consequential challenges facing Michigan and society: the clean energy transition across electricity and transportation systems, with particular attention to how the state's automotive ecosystem can be mobilized during this transition. MAGNET studies this transition drawing on Michigan's unique strengths in the automotive and energy sectors.
MAGNET is a family of complementary indices that together provide a full picture of where the state stands in its clean mobility and energy transition, the challenges it faces, and the most valuable strategies going forward — transforming complicated and fast-changing real-world challenges into interpretable measures for policymakers and industry decision-makers. Centered on this index, the initiative will develop interdisciplinary research, advance teaching and research training, and sustain engagement with the automotive industry, utilities, and policymakers across the state.
MAGNET will produce survey and data analytics infrastructure, peer-reviewed research published in high-impact journals, extensive educational content integrated into undergraduate and graduate curricula, and a flagship "MAGNET Report" white paper. The initiative aims to develop public indicators that track progress and identify key challenges, produce research-based insights to inform decision-making by industry, policymakers, and communities, and increase the visibility of the University of Michigan in discussions of Michigan's energy transition.
- Great Lakes Maritime Initiative (GLMI): Alton Worthington is part of a team led by U-M Engineering that aims to position the Great Lakes as a national hub for shipbuilding revitalization, maritime innovation, and workforce development. The initiative will translate research into real-world impact at speed and scale while building a comprehensive maritime talent pipeline and strengthening U.S. industrial competitiveness. GLMI will launch a U-M institute, an integrated maritime workforce program that builds on the successful U.S. Navy BRIDGE model, and a Maritime Commercialization Lab.
"These projects demonstrate how strategic investment can fuel innovation across a large and complex institution," said interim Executive Vice President and CFO Bobby Hewlett. "They reflect the kind of forward-looking investment that allows Michigan to adapt, lead and deliver impact in an ever-changing world."
To learn more about these SIF award winners and others, visit the Look to Michigan website.
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Excerpted from a story written by Jody Berger, U-M Public Affairs
