A cohort of 4 projects were awarded Inspire Funds in April 2023. The report-outs from these projects are described below with a summary of project work and progress.
The 2023 cohort of Inspire Fund awardees met with the 2024 cohort of awardees in May 2024 to share their accomplishments, successes, and challenges, and to foster a connection between these research teams as resources to one another. The 2024 cohort has begun their projects and will share their products in 2025.
“Affordable Housing Book Project”: Gregg Colburn and Rebecca Walter
The Inspire Fund award funded 2 graduate students who were able to contribute to considerable progress on the book, Affordable Housing in the U.S. Additional details were provided by Gregg Colburn; “About 75% of the manuscript is now complete and Rebecca and I are finalizing the final chapters. The contributions of the graduate students were invaluable as we processed extensive data to support the narrative of the book.” The project has faced a delay based on the book editor leaving the publishing company, Routledge, and a delay in identifying a replacement. Following this delay, the team anticipated having a full manuscript by the end of the first quarter and based on feedback from the editor/publisher could be in a position to finalize the book by the middle of 2024.
“Participatory Design as a Tool for Green Space Development in Amazonian Cities, Iquitos, Peru”: Coco Alarcon and Ken Yocum
The Healthy Amazonian Green Cities project included engaging with community members to develop the green space near their homes and on their own land. This project took place in Iquitos, Peru, a city of 0.5 million people. This city has the lowest development index for Peru, and also experiences species loss and urban heat island effects. This project worked to increase grean space prevalence to improve One Health (health of humans, animals, and the environment). This funding supported the pilot phase of the project, in turn supporting the award of 2 spin off projects, focused on related topics including improving soil health, and a human-centered design focused student project.
“Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr. Research Collective – II”: Tyler Sprague
The Inspire award supported formatting the exhibit on Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr. in Gould Gallery. The exhibit was open in Gould Gallery February 1st through March 15th, 2024. Tyler Sprague supplemented the CBE Inspire Funds with a grant from 4Culture, and the funds were used to hire 7 students to put together the panel displays for the exhibit, secure permissions for images use, and produce plots. Challenges arose associated with accessing 4Culture funds, due to the University of Washington Financial Transformation. After the exhibit, Tyler Sprague intends to prepare the Roll of Honor application for McAdoo.
“Preliminary Case Study: Readiness of Our Regional Electrical Vehicle Infrastructure Under the Increasingly Volatile Climate”: Lingzi Wu
The Inspire Fund award supported a Urban Design and Planning PhD student, Shiqi Ding, to work on the project. Shiqi Ding was able to complete a few research steps, including literature review, data collection, data preprocessing, and clustering. Additionally, she is working on spatial correlation analysis and cross-cluster comparison. Anticipated outcomes include the presentation of preliminary results at the 2024 ASCE International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering and subsequent publication of the full research findings in a top-tier journal. An abstract was submitted to the 2024 ASCE International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering.