SAFES integrates agriculturally and environmentally related disciplines to develop holistic approaches for tackling "wicked" challenges.
Programmatic Domains
Achieving agricultural, food, economic, and ecosystem sustainability amid changing political, economic, and environmental climates is inherently a multi-system problem that can be a moving target. The science of agricultural sustainability for landscape-level challenges will require a multi-disciplinary and multi-scale approach involving innovations in integrated modeling, data science, and visualization.
SAFES establishes an infrastructure of four programmatic domains to address key challenges that impact society within the interconnected contexts of agriculture, food, watersheds, natural resources, the economy, and urban/rural interfaces. These domains of expertise are the scaffold that support the establishment and endurance of areas of expertise, fortifying the University's capacity to effectively respond and provide solutions to emergent issues such as disruption, resilience, regeneration, biodiversity, optimizing ecosystems services, and innovative stakeholder engagement, among others.
Data
The data domain will create a capacity of expertise in the theory and methods of data acquisition and analysis. This domain will identify data sources that should be available to researchers at Penn State and work to make these resources easily accessible to the Penn State research community. The data domain will also identify and develop state of the art techniques to collect original data (sensor technology) and mine data (machine learning or artificial intelligence) for important new insights relevant to multisystem dynamics and landscape scale interactions.
Models
The models domain will create a capacity of expertise in coupling and translating information across biophysical and socioeconomic models. This framework builds on strengths at Penn State in the development and use of computational models and tools for research and expands this expertise to integrate across models and collaborate across modeling teams and platforms. The model domain will focus on building data and computational tools to help facilitate coupling and translation across individual models.
Discovery
The discovery domain will create a capacity of expertise in making acquired data and interoperable models accessible to academic and non-academic audiences within and beyond the university. This domain builds strength in specialized translations (visual, technical, verbal, etc.) that can effectively communicate the knowledge and thus extend the societal benefits of the research, evaluation of new technologies, and design of communications around policy options and business management solutions. The discovery domain builds on a strong and unique tradition in the college for “use- and need-inspired" research. The discovery domain will be a “switchboard" for connecting researchers to resources and building synergies across the University to leverage talent and skill within and especially beyond the college.
Landscape-Level Interactions
The landscape-scale interactions domain will build a capacity of expertise in understanding how interactions occur across scales, which is critical to improving our predictability of how a system at one spatial scale will be influenced by an impact occurring at a different spatial scale. This framework may be understood as a cross-cutting research domain that will address fundamental challenges most modelers and data scientists face when attempting to understand multisystem dynamics; namely, how are the different components in the system integrated, and importantly how do these dynamics interact across different landscape scales.
SAFES Critical Issue Initiatives
Advancing knowledge and practice on economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable agricultural systems in urbanized landscapes.

Developing sustainable bioeconomy solutions to generate carbon negative biochemicals, biomaterials, bioenergy, and food products.

Working to understand and improve collaborative governance effectiveness, outcomes, and impacts in order to create more equitable and sustainable systems to manage natural resources.

Understanding the complex nature and consequences of water contaminants and providing critical data to empower effective and time-critical solutions.

Addressing interconnected problems surrounding food choice, food waste, human health, and the environmental impacts of these systems.

Translating Critical Zone research into actionable management practices.

Working to understand the complex factors underpinning biodiversity declines and creating tools to improve biodiversity outcomes.

Harnessing the potential for agricultural technology and systems design to ensure resilience at the landscape-level.

Working to build a next-generation, integrated suite of models and analytic tools to understand the interdependent stressors, impacts, adaptations, and vulnerabilities of global and regional change.

Transforming the impact and effectiveness of responses to “hot spots” and “hot moments” of water contamination.

SAFES Seed Grant Competitions

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Projects underway as a rapid response to the coronavirus pandemic and its impacts on the interconnected systems of agriculture, food, and the environment.


SAFES and Penn State’s Center for Security Research and Education (CSRE) are collaborating to support research related to the protection of the nation’s food and water supplies and associated critical infrastructure.


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4.11.2022
SAFES Workshop Series
Each semester, SAFES will host a seminar series. The series supports faculty researchers and administrators in expanding their knowledge of external funding opportunities and internal Penn State programs that can support new interdisciplinary research collaborations. For questions, please email safes@psu.edu.

SAFES' Spring 2021 workshop series will take place on Thursdays at 3 p.m. The series supports faculty researchers and administrators in expanding their knowledge of external funding opportunities and internal Penn State programs that can support new interdisciplinary research collaborations. For questions, please email safes@psu.edu.