Arizona State University plans to launch a new interdisciplinary laboratory by the end of next year that will focus on searching for sustainable solutions to global, environmental and societal issues.

ASU President Michael Crow calls the lab “a medical school for the Earth.”

The headquarters of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, which will be the largest research facility at ASU, will be built in Tempe and is expected to cost over $200 million. Construction is scheduled to be completed by December 2021.

The namesake of the laboratory is the current president and CEO of Wrigley Enterprises. Wrigley has donated millions to fund different projects across ASU, including the Global Institute of Sustainability and the hiring of leading sustainability scholars and researchers.

Wrigley is the “naming donor” of the lab. It will encompass the College of Global Futures, which will include two established institutions — the School of Sustainability and the School for the Future of Innovation in Society — and a new one, the School of Complex Adaptive Systems.

Christopher Boone, the current dean of the School of Sustainability, has been named the inaugural dean of the new college. In his vision statement, Boone said the college will be “dedicated to the principle that we can and should build a better future for everyone.”

The search for Boone’s replacement and the director for the School of Complex Adaptive Systems will happen “on an accelerated pathway” said Peter Schlosser, vice president and vice provost of the lab. He hopes to have both candidates finalized by the opening of the headquarters next year.

“The reason we created the School of Complex Adaptive Systems is based on the fact that we are dealing with the ultimate complex system, the Earth,” Schlosser said. “In order to make progress in understanding it… We really need those students who are coming primarily out of the schools of sustainability and future innovation to be familiar with the fundamental concepts of a complex system.”

Lowering carbon emissions and reducing waste production will be two of the issues the lab will focus on first, Schlosser said.

According to Schlosser, the new college will feature interdisciplinary programs, courses, certificates and micro-credentials bridging the three schools. He hopes students from all three schools will “better understand the complex system of the Earth and… move it along a safe trajectory into the future.”

“This will allow us to do more interdisciplinary work and give us more access to different resources that relate to our research projects,” said Nicole Mayberry, a third-year Ph.D. student in the School for the Future Innovation in Society. “It seems like a lot of resources are shrinking right now, but this lab is energizing and provides a larger network of resources despite a really difficult time in the midst of a pandemic.”

Rimjhim Aggarwal, an associate professor at the School of Sustainability with nearly 15 years of experience at ASU, is looking forward to being one of the professors pioneering this merger.

“This initiative opens up opportunities for us to engage in new research initiatives, new ways of learning and new ways to design solutions in our local area that we can scale across the globe,” Aggarwal said. “This will give us the resources and funds to do this at a larger scale and help us bring along our students.”

Most recently, Aggarwal has been looking into the intersection of food, water and energy issues in Arizona. She hopes the combination of resources the new lab plans to provide will help her find solutions to “the problems we’re facing urgently and at a local and global scale.”

At the very core of the lab is a solutions-driven approach to issues, according to Crow.

“We’re going to be focusing on the relationships between humans in the built environment and the natural environment,” Crow said. “That relationship needs to be enhanced, improved and optimized or we won’t have enough to succeed.”

Crow said the college’s target enrollment is 5,000 students. He hopes to hit that within the next five years.

“We will draw students from a wide range of countries and states, and this will become the most significant institute of its type,” Crow said.

“Fifteen years from now I hope we will be producing people, ideas and solutions for everything we are encountering,” he said. “Fifteen years from now, I hope Phoenix and the Global Futures Lab will be one of the most important places on the planet for designing and implementing our global future.”

Anton L. Delgado is an environmental reporter for The Arizona Republic/AZCentral. Follow his reporting on Twitter at @antonldelgado and tell him about stories at [email protected].

Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and @azcenvironment on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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