Five talented University of Illinois students from varied disciplines across campus have been selected as the inaugural Levenick Undergraduate Research Scholars at the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE), giving them valuable hands-on research opportunities in environmental sustainability.
The Levenick Undergraduate Research Scholars will work with a faculty mentor to evaluate a sustainability challenge on campus, analyze data related to the issue, and make recommendations about how to address it. Funded by a generous gift from donors Stuart L. and Nancy J. Levenick, the program offers independent study credit and experiential learning for students, a small financial incentive for mentors, and fresh ideas to improve sustainability on campus.
The students submitted research proposals to advance goals outlined in the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP), using data they collect or already gathered by the campus. Their projects will explore ways to expand recycling, improve energy efficiency, reuse waste for sustainable fuel or renewable energy, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Enrolled in five different colleges across campus, the young scholars bring diverse skills and perspectives to this effort:
Dylan Wombacher, a sophomore in Plant Biotechnology (College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences): A project to quantify single-use plastic waste in labs across campus and identify where a recycling program would have the most impact. Wombacher will be mentored by Isaac Klimasmith, lecturer in statistics and quantitative plant sciences and incoming Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Crop Sciences.
Kristina Muharremaj, a junior in Earth, Society, & Environmental Sustainability (College of Liberal Arts & Sciences): A project examining how the spacing of public lighting affects students’ perceptions of pedestrian safety after dark, and what changes could improve energy efficiency without compromising pedestrian comfort. Muharremaj will be mentored by Nooreen Meghani, Teaching Assistant Professor in the School of Earth, Society, and Environment.
John Han, a junior in Finance and Data Science (Gies College of Business): A project investigating the energy consumption impact of retrocommissioning – operational changes to improve a building’s energy efficiency – to assess whether it delivers meaningful savings and to help prioritize future investments. Han will be mentored by Eric Green, Senior Academic Program Instructor/Adviser at iSEE.
Vivek Limaye, a sophomore in Aerospace Engineering (Grainger College of Engineering): A project to evaluate whether food scraps, agricultural residues, and other campus organic waste can serve as a viable source of sustainable aviation fuel production, by analyzing feedstock availability and bioprocessing performance. He will be mentored by Luis Rodriguez, Associate Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering.
Michelle Martignon, a sophomore in Sustainable Design (College of Fine and Applied Arts): A project developing a framework for a full feasibility study for an anaerobic digester at the U. of I. Dairy Farm, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from livestock manure and advance renewable energy and resource recovery. Martignon will be mentored by Karin Hodgin Jones, Teaching Assistant Professor and Director of the Sustainable Design Program.
Overall, the program is designed to empower students with the critical analytical skills needed to be global stewards of environmental sustainability and engage them in the responsibilities of making our campus and the world more sustainable.
About Stuart L. and Nancy J. Levenick
Stuart Levenick retired as group president from Caterpillar Inc., where he held a variety of executive roles, and he currently holds board positions with several international corporations. He also serves as a member of the board of directors and the development committee chair for the University of Illinois Foundation, and is a member of the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics Campaign Planning Committee. Stuart Levenick graduated from the College of ACES with a bachelor’s degree in forestry and furthered his education as a Sloan Fellow, earning a master’s degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was awarded the University of Illinois Varsity “I” Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014 and the College of ACES Career Achievement Award in 2018.
Nancy Levenick graduated from the University of Toronto, Faculty of Education, and taught high school English in Toronto before the couple embarked on an eight-move, global career, including assignments in Canada, Singapore, Russia, and Japan, returning to Peoria in 2004. Since then, Nancy Levenick has been an active member of the Children’s Hospital of Illinois Advocacy Board and a board member of WTVP and the Peoria Ballet. Both Stuart and Nancy have been active members of the Heart of Illinois United Way.
Lizet Alvarez uses a water-bottle refill station on campus. All photo credits: Fred Zwicky / University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
On move-in day at the University of Illinois, families haul the essentials of dorm life up stairwells and into residence halls as students settle into their new rooms, carrying mini-fridges, posters, laundry baskets – and often, cases of bottled water.
Professor Jennifer Fraterrigo noticed the plastic bottles while helping her own first-year student move in.
Later, scrolling through social media posts from other parents and students, she saw the same concern repeated again and again: Many families were unsure whether the campus tap water was safe to drink. For them, bottled water felt like the safest option.
But those cases of bottled water add up quickly. Sold in residence halls, retail dining locations, and athletic events in staggering numbers, water bottles are one of the most visible sources of single-use plastic waste on campus.
The experience confirmed what Fraterrigo had learned through her work to reduce plastic waste on campus. As Associate Director of Campus Sustainability at the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE), she had initiated a survey investigating why students routinely chose bottled water over the tap. Were there enough places to refill a bottle on campus? Was there a broad perception that tap water is unsafe?
Those efforts have coalesced into a cross-campus collaboration by iSEE, University Housing, student researchers, and other units to validate campus water quality, add dozens of new bottle-filling stations, make them more accessible to students, and build trust in the water flowing through campus.
Jennifer Fraterrigo, iSEE’s Associate Director for Campus Sustainability, initiated a survey asking why students choose bottled water over the tap.
The 2022 iSEE survey examined student and faculty attitudes about tap, filtered, and bottled water. More than a third of first-year students said bottled water was their primary source of drinking water, and many believed that bottled water is safer than tap water.
“Some students may come from a place where they never drank the water out of the tap,” Fraterrigo said. “Probably the vast majority of people don’t know where their water is coming from.”
Convenience also emerged as a barrier. Over half of first- and second-year students said there are not enough convenient places to refill a reusable water bottle on campus.
The goal of the survey was to identify why people choose to purchase bottled water and what sustainable interventions could make the greatest impact.
“We saw two directions,” said Fraterrigo, Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences. “One, we needed to do some testing to confirm that the quality of the water is safe. And two, we needed to make sure there were more of these bottle fillers available and that campus standards include bottle fillers.”
For testing, iSEE turned to Ro Cusick, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, who had already incorporated drinking water analysis into their coursework. After hearing Fraterrigo present on campus plastic waste, Cusick saw an opportunity for a research project to connect classroom learning with a real campus concern. “It was really relevant and interesting to the students,” Cusick said.
Compared to EPA standards, drinking water at the University of Illinois was found to be of very high quality. Click to enlarge image.
During the first year, Cusick’s students collected water samples from a variety of campus buildings, including a few residence halls, the Campus Instructional Facility, and the Illini Union. In the second year, the focus shifted to residence halls specifically. Students tested three key water quality indicators: free chlorine, lead, and copper. The chlorine residual indicates how safely water is being transferred; lead and copper are monitored due to potential public health risks.
The results were reassuring across the residence halls, showing very low levels of lead and copper and healthy chlorine residual, Cusick said. The water on campus comes from the pristine Mahomet Aquifer, which exceeds federal safety standards according to annual American Water testing.
“The quality of the reports was high because the students cared,” Cusick said, and they gained valuable experience collecting and synthesizing data and preparing reports for real campus clients.
“If our data helps students feel safer to drink water rather than purchase bottled water, that’s great for campus sustainability. If there’s less plastic waste, that’s better for students’ health in the long run, too,” Cusick said.
Meanwhile, iSEE partnered with University Housing on a successful application to the Student Sustainability Committee (SSC) to fund additional bottle-filling stations. Miriam Keep, iSEE Sustainability Programs Coordinator, worked closely with Housing to write the grant application – a collaboration reflecting how sustainability projects often move forward on campus.
“Anytime you’re working with people from different areas of campus, you’re bringing a diverse set of ideas together,” said Aaron Lewis, Assistant Director for Housing Maintenance Operations. “When you put those together, there can be a great benefit.”
A class led by Ro Cusick, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, tested water samples from residence halls and other campus buildings, with reassuring results.
iSEE and Housing settled on a proposal to provide one bottle filler per 100 students.
So far, 28 new refill stations have been installed as part of the initiative, including eight over winter break, with 10 more planned in the coming months. Housing is funding the labor for installation, while SSC funds cover equipment costs.
The exact configuration will vary in each residence hall building, Lewis said. In complexes like the Florida Avenue Residence Halls, renovation plans include water bottle refill stations distributed across the towers. Other residences have suite-style bathrooms where students can fill up their water bottles with private taps. And newer buildings such as Wassaja Hall have already incorporated water refill stations as part of campus sustainability requirements for LEED Silver construction.
Early usage data suggests strong demand. Many new refill stations include digital counters that track the number of bottles filled, and one station alone logged 40,000 refills from August to winter break. “What we can see from the counters on the bottle fillers installed over the summer is that they have been used extensively,” Lewis said.
As part of the broader initiative, Illinois Athletics also has worked with iSEE to review reusable water bottle policies. Empty reusable water bottles and tumblers are now allowed within stadiums, and water refill stations have been installed to give Illinois fans access to free, sustainable drinking water. “I’d love to see the results from sales data indicating that there’s a decline in bottled water being purchased,” Fraterrigo said.
Infrastructure alone does not change behavior; students need to know where refill stations are located and feel confident using them. iSEE partnered with Facilities & Services to conduct a campus-wide inventory of water refill stations. Using GIS mapping, the team developed an interactive map to replace a static PDF list of refill stations. University Housing is also sharing water quality information from the engineering classes through digital signage in residence halls and QR codes linking to test results.
Illinois student Jack Casey, who was part of the water-testing research project, uses a bottle-filler on campus.
Looking ahead, iSEE hopes to incorporate refill station maps into the Illinois App, making that information even easier to find.
“There’s more to do,” Keep said. “We are trying to get the message out about water quality – it’s hard to change behavior and habits. This is a long, ongoing effort to keep emphasizing the same message.”
For Fraterrigo, this project demonstrates the importance of cross-campus collaboration for sustainability initiatives.
“We brought together a lot of different groups to accomplish what we did,” she said.
“We want everyone in the campus community to feel like they’re part of these solutions. This is a global problem – plastic waste,” Fraterrigo said. “Here’s an opportunity to think globally and act locally.”
The initiative ties directly into iSEE’s zero-waste goals under the Illinois Climate Action Plan – to keep waste out of landfills – and the institute’s efforts to engage and educate campus about sustainability. Engaging students in research connects them to the solutions and data that drive their peers’ decisions about water bottle usage.
Each time a student stops by a water refill station instead of the vending machine, that’s one less plastic bottle purchased and tossed – and one more consumer reassured that it’s safe to turn back to the tap.
– Article by iSEE Communications Intern Sophia Beem
Khanna, an environmental economist, is among three University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professors recognized this year by AAAS, the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals. Fellows are elected annually by the AAAS Council for exceptional achievements across disciplines – from research, teaching, and technology to administration and communicating science to the public.
“I’m incredibly honored to be selected as an AAAS Fellow,” Khanna said. “It’s gratifying to be recognized by your peers and to see environmental social science research elevated through this prestigious award.”
The new AAAS Fellows will be honored at a forum in Washington, D.C., on May 29, 2026.
In her ground-breaking research, Khanna explores what motivates agricultural producers to participate in conservation programs or adopt innovative approaches to meet demands for food and fuel, such as precision farming and biofuels. Her work informs stakeholders and policy makers about the cost-effectiveness of various policies to improve environmental quality and their implications for farm profitability, land use, and food and fuel production. Her pioneering analysis of voluntary approaches to environmental protection demonstrated that firms can be effectively motivated to reduce their pollution voluntarily because it may preempt future regulation, while also improving a firm’s reputation with investors and consumers.
Khanna also leads her field in developing models to understand the impact of biofuels and renewable energy policies on food and fuel prices, as well as land use, greenhouse gas emissions, and water quality. Her interdisciplinary research provides insights from the farm level to the economy as a whole.
Khanna was named iSEE Director in July 2022 but has been a leader at the Institute since its inception in December 2013, first as Associate Director for Education & Outreach, then as Associate Director for Research, and as Interim Director in 2020. The institute addresses the world’s pressing sustainability, energy, and environmental needs by bringing together faculty, students, and staff from across campus to focus on research solutions, campus sustainability, and academics and engagement — all through an interdisciplinary lens.
The institute also successfully launched an Environmental Leadership Program, which is training the next generation of sustainability leaders, and a new EcoReps sustainability ambassadors program. Additionally, iSEE has continued to lead the development of the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP), support expansion of on-campus solar and geothermal energy projects, and partner with other academic units on innovative learning opportunities for students.
The Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE) is accepting proposals to support interdisciplinary research, visioning, and planning activities on ambitious topics related to sustainability, energy, and environment. The iSEE seed funds are available to promote meaningful research collaborations among faculty and scientists across campus and to raise the national visibility of U. of I. and the research team in the topic area. The specific goal of the funding is to expedite the coalescence of interdisciplinary research teams that touch on any of the thematic areas of interest to iSEE and to develop multiple strong, large-scale (>$1M) proposals that can be submitted for external funding through iSEE in 2026-27.
Three types of proposals are invited:
Seed Research projects are limited to a maximum of $30,000 for one year. Funding may support research assistantships for graduate students, postdoc time, data purchase, travel, and/or other necessary expenses that support growth of the initiative. Faculty summer salary and equipment are excluded from this funding.
Campus as a Living Laboratory (CALL) projects are limited to a maximum of $30,000 for one year. CALL projects link faculty researchers to sites or initiatives on campus that are relevant to objectives in the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP). CALL researchers are also expected to leverage the seed funding to develop interdisciplinary external funding proposals through iSEE.
Visioning and Planning Activities are limited to a maximum of $50,000 (total) spread over two years. Funding may support workshops and planning meetings hosted by the project team, in addition to activities similar to Seed Research and CALL projects. Year two funding is contingent upon meaningful progress in year one.
All proposals must meaningfully involve researchers from at least two different disciplines and two different campus units. Proposals should address research questions in one or more iSEE thematic areas of climate solutions, energy transitions, secure & sustainable agriculture, sustainable infrastructure, and water & land stewardship. Along with these themes are the cross-cutting topics of circular bioeconomy and policy.
Successful applicants for the seed funding and CALL projects will be expected to submit external funding proposals related to this seed funding through iSEE in 2026-27. Applicants for Visioning and Planning Activities proposal should explain how their activities will promote multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional collaborations that need a long lead time to develop a team to submit a proposal for a large, team-based Center-type grant.
Successful external funding proposals submitted through iSEE will not affect indirect cost recovery to the home department of the PIs. iSEE will provide personnel support for event planning, proposal development, and, in the case of successful external proposals, post-award management. Recipients will also work with iSEE to communicate the findings of their activities, research, publications, and other outcomes.
Guidelines for preparing the proposal
Proposals are invited from faculty and scientists who are currently eligible to serve as PIs on proposals for external funding (e.g., tenured/tenure-track faculty, research professors, research scientists). Postdocs are not eligible to apply. Updated versions of previously submitted proposals may be resubmitted if feedback from the iSEE review has been addressed. The proposal will be submitted through an online portal with the following sections:
Project title
Principal and co-investigator information (names, affiliations, and email addresses)
Abstract [up to 150 words]
Motivation and Opportunity [up to 500 words]
Describe the scholarly merit, innovation, and substantive interdisciplinarity of the proposed research.
Team Science Approach [up to 400 words]
Describe the need for interdisciplinary collaboration and the role and contribution of each team member to tackle the problem at hand.
Plan for Seed Funding [up to 600 words]
Describe specific plans for the use of seed funding and the potential impact on national visibility and growth of the initiative. Describe the potential to develop a large-scale (>$1M), externally funded research program, including a comprehensive plan with specific funding opportunities (anticipated in 2026-2027), which the applicants will pursue.
Summarize any previous efforts to secure external funding for this research.
Other campus seed funding sources [up to 200 words]
If you are receiving seed funding from any other unit on campus in the 2025-26 or 2026-27 year for this project or closely related research, please describe how that seed funded research differs from this proposal.
Additionally, a single compiled PDF with the following documents for the principal investigator (PI) and co-investigators (co-Is) is required: (i) a CV (up to three pages) that includes five most relevant recent publications and five other publications; (ii) a summary of all internal and external current and pending research funding; and (iii) an itemized budget (with no F&A or fringe benefits included). SciENcv is the recommended format for CV and current and pending.
The deadline for proposal submissions is 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 8, 2026, uploaded to the OVCRI Special Programs site. Applicants will be informed about final funding decisions by mid-May, with a start date for funding beginning or after August 15, 2026.
Questions about this RFP may be addressed to Jeremy Guest, iSEE Associate Director for Research at jsguest@illinois.edu.
URBANA, Ill. — A new AI-based system can generate high-resolution soybean yield maps across Brazil using only limited local data, improving yield estimates for this key agricultural region and potentially providing strategic benefits to global soybean markets.
Soybeans at the South Farms. Credit: Brian Stauffer/University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
The newly published work by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign demonstrates an innovative approach that enables high-performance national yield estimates for Brazilian soybeans, even in areas where directly reported local yield data are very limited.
By leveraging knowledge learned from earlier U.S.-based work through so-called “AI transfer learning,” the research team was able to make detailed yield predictions at the municipal level using Brazil’s state-level soybean yield data. It’s one of the first successful nationwide applications of cross-scale AI yield predictions for Brazilian agriculture.
Although Brazil is currently the world’s largest soybean producer and a major global food exporter, high-resolution yield data for Brazilian soybeans remain largely unavailable. These data are essential for precision agriculture, risk management, and sustainability planning, and the data scarcity has hampered scientific understanding of this important agricultural region. Previous crop yield modeling — which relies on coarse state-level data to model finer predictions at the municipal or field level — has demonstrated limited performance nationally.
The Illinois research team developed a new framework to predict national soybean yields at a finer level by integrating satellite observations, climate data, and state-level yield statistics, leveraging AI transfer learning techniques with the knowledge learned from their U.S. based models.
Remarkably, the model for Brazilian soybean achieved strong predictive performance without using any municipal-level yield data. The explained variance (R²), a key measure of effectiveness, doubled in the new model compared to conventional cross-scale studies. When municipal data were included, performance improved further (R² of 0.57), comparable to the best existing approaches that rely on much more abundant data.
The power of transfer learning
A key innovation of the study is the use of AI transfer learning, which allows scientists to reuse existing models rather than starting from scratch in each region. This makes it possible to generate detailed agricultural information in areas where collecting large amounts of local data would be costly, slow, or impractical.
Spatial maps of the yield data show the harvested-area-weighted average soybean yield across all valid years for each municipality (left); and the standard deviation across all valid years in each municipality. Credit: Paper in the International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation.
For this work, knowledge from an advanced model that was trained to predict soybean yield in the U.S. was adapted to Brazilian growing conditions. By fine-tuning the U.S. model using only state-level data or sparse municipal-level data from Brazil, the researchers were able to account for differences in climate, crop phenology, and management practices between the two countries.
First author Jiaying Zhang explained, “This approach boosted the effectiveness of cross-scale yield prediction from 50 percent to 78 percent of the theoretical upper limit, which we defined as the best performance achieved by models trained with highly detailed local yield data. The results demonstrate that AI-driven transfer learning can overcome both data scarcity and scalability challenges in agricultural modeling.”
Implications for yield predictions worldwide
The findings arrive at a pivotal moment for global soybean markets.
In 2018, Brazil surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest soybean producer for the first time. The ability to monitor and forecast production in detail is essential for understanding global soybean supply as well as the environmental impacts of large-scale agriculture in Brazil. Enhanced predictability of soybean yield will enable more accurate assessments of supply-demand relationships, land-use change, and soil health impacts at scale for more informed decision-making.
“The ability to monitor and anticipate crop production regionally and globally with high fidelity is strategically important for market analysis, trade forecasting, and risk assessment for U.S. soybean producers,” said the project lead and senior author Kaiyu Guan, Levenick Endowed Professor and Director of the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center at Illinois.
The study provides a pathway for applying advanced yield modeling in regions of the world with limited data, supporting food security planning, climate risk management, and evidence-based agricultural policy. By leveraging models trained in data-rich regions and adapting them to areas where data are scarce, the approach opens new opportunities for cost-effective, global-scale agricultural intelligence.
The study is titled “Transfer learning for improved crop yield predictions in a cross-scale pathway: a case study for Brazilian national soybean” (DOI: 10.1016/j.jag.2025.104981).
The work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Pesticide use is integral to modern-day farming, but it has carried unintended consequences. Research shows pesticides have caused steep declines in the populations of bees and other pollinators vital to agriculture, as well as possible links to cancer and other diseases.
Scott McArt. Credit: Cornell University
The 2026 iSEE Critical Conversation, “Balancing the Intended and Unintended Effects of Managing Pests,” is scheduled for March 5-6 at the Illini Center in Chicago. The two-day event will bring together scientists, farmers, beekeepers, and industry and nonprofit leaders to encourage dialogue and find solutions to this complex challenge.
The public portion of the event is a March 5 keynote address by Scott McArt, Associate Professor of Pollinator Health at Cornell University.
McArt started his career as a chemical ecologist, studying the chemistry that influences interactions among different organisms – in his case, the natural toxins in plants that make them inedible to predators. About 15 years ago, he shifted his work to explore the impact of unnatural toxins – pesticides – on organisms and how that contributes to biodiversity loss. While other toxicologists had documented their harmful effects, McArt wanted to know exactly which pesticides bees and other pollinators are being exposed to, and at what levels, to better understand the risks and pinpoint solutions. Through his appointment with Cornell Cooperative Extension, McArt also works directly with beekeepers, farmers, and regulatory agencies to improve pollinator conservation and health.
In this Q&A, McArt explains the challenges posed by pesticides and the work he and others have done to address them. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
This year’s iSEE Critical Conversation will focus on the effects of pesticide use. Why is this a timely topic right now?
I would say the reason we are talking about this is that we’re in a global biodiversity crisis. There are species that are being impacted by the things that we do. And agriculture happens to be one of those major things, and pesticides happen to be one of the stresses in agriculture that is contributing to biodiversity loss.
How do you benefit people but also benefit the environment? There is a constant tension between those two things as the global population gets to the point where we’re having significant impacts on the land and the various animals that live on that land.
Pesticides are used to improve yields by controlling pests that are harmful to crops. Are their benefits overstated?
With current agricultural practices, how we set up modern farming, we are absolutely reliant on pesticides. If we didn’t have pesticides, we would experience yield losses, there’s no question about that. But maybe we’re not doing agriculture in a way that is actually sustainable. Maybe we’re doing agriculture in a way that is overly reliant on pesticides.
I will be talking about some examples where, in certain contexts, we can show very conclusively that we are overusing some pesticides. The risks outweigh the benefits. In other application contexts, we can’t show that. The benefits are really clear, and there might be risks, but then the issue becomes: If we are going to get rid of something, we’re going to lose a major benefit, even though we might be harming wildlife in the process. That becomes less of a biological question and more of a social question or even an economic question. That’s why I think this interdisciplinary workshop is really necessary for this particular topic.
What are the unintended effects of pesticide use on pollinators and other wildlife? What are the biggest risks they pose? Are some of those difficult to measure?
Our lab does a lot of risk assessment for pollinators. There’s no perfect way of doing risk assessment, but what we can say is that there are problems with pesticides. They are directly linked to declines of many species in our country, including pollinators – that’s not just bees, but butterflies, moths, and other species of pollinators. And it’s not just pollinators – it’s a lot of other things, especially insects, but frogs and other species as well. We know pesticides have a long-term negative impact on many of these species, and they are a contributor to biodiversity loss. So clearly we are using pesticides in a way that, if the goal of the risk assessment and pesticide registration process is to minimize those nontarget effects, well, we’re failing.
Can you give an example of the specific impact, especially on bees?
McArt examines a bee colony with undergraduates in a summer research program in 2019. Credit: Delanie Sickler
Last year, honeybee colony losses in the United States were at 56%. That is the highest honeybee colony loss rate in recorded history. This year, some of the early reports we’re getting from commercial beekeepers are just as troubling. So will it be 56% again? I don’t know, but that is unsustainable. Beekeepers are going out of business because they can’t sustain that level of losses year after year.
Are pesticides driving all of those losses? Absolutely not. There are other factors that also play a role. But pesticides are definitely playing a role.
For wild pollinators, based on the most recent science, we know that the use of two types of pesticides in particular, neonicotinoids and pyrethroids, are the strongest predictor of wild bee declines in the United States. This was from a Nature paper last year, which put lots of different factors into a really impressive analysis. Over and over, for the past decade or so now that we’re starting to get large-scale studies like this, we’re seeing that pesticides are, if not the major driver, one of the major drivers of insect declines in the U.S., and globally.
Why is it important for growers to consider these unintended effects? What are the costs to our environment, the agricultural economy, and our food supply?
If you’re an environmentalist, any loss of species is disheartening to you. But not everybody is an environmentalist. Other people might say, OK, if using pesticides is necessary for my livelihood, what’s the problem with losing a species or two? Or, more likely, they may have no idea that pesticides are causing large-scale environmental problems. I think that’s again a social issue that needs to be navigated.
From an economic perspective, we know a lot of insects play major roles not only in the functioning of natural systems, but also in the functioning of farms. So if you’re in pollination agriculture, and you have half the number of bees in your orchard, you have half the amount of pollination occurring; therefore, yield may go down in those crops. If you’re in corn and soybeans, yield might not actually change all that much – maybe in soybeans because they’re pollination-dependent to some extent, but corn pretty much is wind-pollinated.
What about all the soil microorganisms – all of the beetles and the various things that live in the soil? If you wipe them out, nutrient cycling goes away. Soil fertility declines. Alternatively, if we wipe out the predators of the pests, there might actually be a pest outbreak.
The other axis is probably the one that resonates with most people: human health effects. A recent study from Iowa shows cancer rates going up quite a bit in that state, and it seems to be tracking with pesticide use. So is that the driver? We don’t really know. But if more and more pesticides are being used, and you’re getting more cancers, more Alzheimer’s, and other human diseases, it could potentially be playing a role. I would say that’s much less abstract to most people. Some people may like bees, while others may have absolutely no idea what a pollinator is. But every single person understands cancer in their own child or in themselves.
What specific topics will you be addressing in your keynote?
I’m a biologist, and I do a lot of risk assessment. In the past 10 years or so I’ve become sort of a closet sociologist, because no progress can be made on this topic by only considering biology. I also collaborate with economists in almost every single thing that we do now, because when people are making decisions about pesticides, oftentimes economics has to be considered. Navigating that complex biological, social, and economic landscape to try and figure out how we make these agricultural systems sustainable, how we define sustainability and then also come to some agreement to make things sustainable – it’s not easy, as you might expect.
I’ll be giving a few different stories of ways that we have been successful in navigating things. One is with a new law restricting pesticides that’s now been implemented in New York, as a direct result of the work we’ve done – not just me, but a lot of other people who contributed as well.
Another story I’ll talk about is something that’s been much more industry-driven: how a commercial apple company initiated a successful reduced-spray pesticide program. It is not only benefiting pollinators but looks like it’s benefiting the growers as well – something that’s not the heavy hand of government but is driven by private industry, the sellers of the apples that are grown by farmers.
The third story I’ll share is something that is actually driven by the stakeholders themselves: beekeepers who want to understand how pesticides are playing a role in colony losses throughout the United States. Bees are exposed to myriad pesticides in the environment, which isn’t good of course. But beekeepers also use pesticides to control parasites in their colonies. One of the major issues the beekeeping industry is facing right now is that they themselves are overusing one particular pesticide. When they do that, the parasites evolve resistance to the pesticide, and unfortunately, they end up doing more harm than good. So we’ve worked with many beekeepers to stop using that pesticide exclusively, to instead use cultural controls, rotations with other pesticides, and other integrated pest management tactics. The parasites don’t develop resistance as quickly, and the beekeepers are able to control them more effectively.
Can you say more about the effort to pass the 2025 New York law that restricts the use of neonicotinoid-treated seeds and its impact?
McArt testifies to the New York State Assembly about proposed pesticide legislation in September 2021. Credit: Julie Suarez
We have this new law in New York state because, honestly, we did a lot of background work to try and get all these groups together, similar to what you’re doing with iSEE. There’s now a new law in Vermont that mimics the New York law; Massachusetts is considering it, Pennsylvania is considering it, and Colorado is considering it. And I was just out in Minnesota, our first Midwestern state, where we had a full day-long workshop that is very similar to what iSEE is putting together. Minnesota is now considering trying to mimic what we’ve done here in New York. The only way to make that successful is to have these really difficult conversations with a lot of different stakeholders at the table, and people with various expertise. There was a lot of enthusiasm, even from the pesticide companies and seed distributors, after that discussion, because everyone felt heard.
People have very strong opinions on the topic of pesticides. And often you’re not going to change anyone’s mind. But you can facilitate a conversation, and you can make people feel heard. In the places that I’ve gone, oftentimes that’s the first step to going a bit further.
Do you see shifting attitudes toward pesticides among farmers and others in the agricultural community as a result of your work?
I’ve been working with apple growers for about 10 years now. No farmer wants to kill bees, and all the growers that I interact with are very receptive to learning more about pesticides, because they want to have good pollination. But they also want to have good pest control. So it’s a constant balance they have to navigate: good pest control, but not overdoing it and killing all the bees, because then they won’t have apples.
More recently, the topic of neonic seed treatments has been at the forefront. That involves talking to corn and soybean growers. There are almost zero corn and soybean growers who feel like they rely on pollinators, so the dynamic and knowledge base is different from that of apple growers. A lot of people just have absolutely no idea that these seed treatments are harming pollinators. That said, I think we’ve seen a major cultural change in New York. Seven years ago, I think it’s safe to say that most field crop farmers did not appreciate me bringing up this topic. Now, not only do we have a new law banning the seed treatments because of the impact on pollinators, but a lot of farmers are buying into it. Perhaps more importantly, they had no idea there were almost no economic benefits from using seed treatments.
Do your studies show that neonic seed treatments don’t do much good? Are the benefits oversold?
In that particular application context, which happens to be the major use of neonicotinoid insecticides in the entire world, including in Illinois, they have extremely infrequent benefits. We estimate that somewhere between 93 to 94 percent of farmers are losing money from using them.
The reason why seed treatments were thought to be so good is that they let you greatly reduce the amount of pesticide that’s applied on a field. Instead of blanket spraying, you can put just a little bit of pesticide on a seed, and then the seeds are protected. So on a field-by-field basis, it could be considered a good thing. But the problem is overuse. We suspect that somewhere between 90 and 100 percent of corn fields in the United States and the majority of soybeans are planted with neonicotinoid seed treatments.
Neonics are also by far the most toxic insecticides to most insects – about an order of magnitude more toxic than any other insecticide. So even though we’ve been using about the same amount of insecticides over the past 20 years on a pound-by-pound basis in the U.S., by using more and more neonics, we’ve made the environment about 10 times more toxic to insects – which is probably why we’re noticing that direct relationship between neonic use and declines in pollinators.
One reason farmers use neonics is that they consider them inexpensive crop insurance. They might only have pests 5 to 6 percent of the time, but the seed treatments provide protection in that very rare chance of a major pest outbreak. But when every single person does that, it becomes the tragedy of the commons.
How can researchers work with farmers/growers to help them understand the impact of pesticide use and maybe change their management practices?
Number one, listen. Researchers and scientists are very good at talking, but we’re not as good at listening. If you’re a scientist who’s reading this, listen to farmers. You might just learn something.
Also, be a service, be a resource for that person.
And third, just be humble. I see a lot of interactions with farmers where maybe the scientist has listened, maybe they’ve provided some data, but they’re not really humble. They kind of come off as some egghead from an ivory tower. That’s a great way to lose a productive dialogue, to lose trust. If we’re going to work together to solve big issues – and sustainable pesticide use in agriculture is absolutely a big, complex issue – well, it turns out working together requires trust. So be humble and earn that trust. Those are my three keys.
– Article by iSEE Communications Specialist Julie Wurth
The Dec. 6 Reimagine Our Future awards ceremony was streamed online. From left are Co-Founder Warren Lavey; Professor Holly Rosencranz, M.D., who sponsored and presented the Sustainable Health Solution prize; Professor Donna Tonini, who presented the Climate Change award; Masters of Ceremony Jenny Zhu and Sandra Voskoboynikova; and competition Co-Founder and Coordinator Leon Liebenberg.
A University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign team that designed a low-cost sensor to detect water contamination took the top prize at the fifth annual Reimagine Our Futuresustainability competition.
The 2025 competition engaged 313 students from 12 universities across the globe. Over eight weeks, students developed fact sheets proposing creative solutions to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, drawing insights from engineering, health sciences, agriculture, architecture, and more.
The overall winners, announced at the Dec. 6 online awards ceremony, won the $2,000 top prize for developing a low-cost, handheld water-quality sensor that uses engineered bacteriophages to quickly detect contamination. Led by Crystal Zhao, a Biochemistry major at Illinois, the team included Marlo Decapo, Valeria Echavarri, Yashwanth Nagarajan, and Torin Schroeder.
Two second-place teams were awarded $1,000 each. Andrea Jimena Arias-Diaz and Ricardo Robles-Fletes from the National Autonomous University of Mexico designed a water-purification system for Xochimilco in Mexico City. And a U. of I. team was honored for its energy-efficient, solar-boosted data-center cooling concept; team members included Akhil Raizada, Logan Justiniani, Anna Aler, Arush Chatterjee, Arnav Pande, Gianna Niecestro, Sarina Shah, and Jack Visnjevac.
The $500 Climate Change Solution award from the Center for Global Studies went to Ayush Thaker, Vidipta Roy, SaarthakJain, and Marcus Lam of Illinois, for a project on surface tiles using microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation.
Two Sustainable Health Solution prizes were awarded, for $500 each: one for a project on care for animals in Ukraine, by a team from the International Humanitarian University in Ukraine; and the second for a medication disposal system designed by students from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.
In total, $8,500 in awards were distributed across 11 teams spanning climate, health, education, transportation, and multidisciplinary innovation categories.
Team leader Crystal Zhao, a Biochemistry major at Illinois, reacts after learning that her multidisciplinary group won the overall award for their innovative “Phage Integrated Environmental Detector,” while Voskoboynikova looks on.
The contest was co-founded by Professor Leon Liebenberg of the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering and Professor Warren Lavey of the School of Earth, Society, and Environment and the College of Law at Illinois.
Lavey praised the students’ ideas for offering hope amid global environmental and social challenges. He also reflected on the lasting influence of the late Professor Robert McKim, who helped establish the competition and urged students and educators alike to take responsibility for sustainability solutions: “We have all contributed to causing the problems, and we therefore all have an obligation to contribute to finding and pursuing solutions,” Lavey said.
Liebenberg emphasized that the competition encourages students to understand the interconnected nature of sustainability challenges, develop innovative responses, and envision how these ideas could be scaled in real communities.
“Our aim is to empower students to combine creativity with systems thinking and to engage boldly with the world’s most pressing problems,” he noted.
The Stanford-led team is developing a process called electrochemical stripping, adsorption, and precipitation (ESAP) to recover ammonia, phosphorus, and magnesium from concentrated waste streams, including those from food industries. These nutrients are essential for crop production and industrial applications, but often end up polluting waterways. ESAP captures and refines them into commercial-grade fertilizers, disinfectants, and other marketable products, using electricity rather than chemical additives.
At Illinois, Jeremy Guest, the Levenick Professor and Director of the Levenick Center for a Climate-Smart Circular Bioeconomy, leads modeling and systems analysis to guide the design, testing, and scaling of ESAP. Guest is also a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering and Associate Director for Research at the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE).
Guest’s group uses two open-source software platforms, QSDsan and BioSTEAM, to simulate performance, costs, emissions, and energy use under real-world conditions. Their work helps identify which designs are most sustainable and cost-effective. The team has also built more than 30 benchmark wastewater treatment plant models representing over 70 percent of U.S. treatment capacity, giving ESAP developers a realistic baseline for comparison.
“Our work connects lab-scale innovation to real-world deployment,” Guest said. “By modeling how these systems perform under uncertainty, we can help design solutions that are both sustainable and financially viable.”
The project also involves Recovered Potential, a Stanford-affiliated startup that will test and commercialize the technology. This close collaboration between research and industry is designed to accelerate ESAP from concept to application.
By combining advanced electrochemistry, open-source modeling, and market-driven design, the Illinois–Stanford collaboration is redefining how wastewater can serve as a renewable source of nutrients, powering a more sustainable, circular bioeconomy.
How BioSTEAM and QSDsan speed scale-up
Before any new wastewater technology is built, researchers can test it virtually. BioSTEAM, an open-source Python platform developed by Jeremy Guest’s team, simulates how biorefineries and treatment systems would be scaled up and operated, from the detailed design and dynamic simulations of unit operations to energy use, costs, and environmental impacts under uncertainty.
QSDsan, also created by Guest’s team, builds on that foundation for sanitation and resource recovery systems. It combines process modeling with techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life cycle assessment (LCA), incorporates uncertainty, and accounts for local context to support quantitative sustainable design and decision making.
Together, these tools let teams explore many design options and site conditions in software, then focus on real-world testing where the technology can deliver the most impact and scale for commercial use.
