Global Grand Challenge: The Future

Global Cornell invites thinkers across campus to use their imaginations to reach beyond the immediate, the tangible, and the well-known constraints. For Cornell's second Global Grand Challenge, the challenge is very literal: it is the future itself.

Imagining Alternative Futures

2024: The world is a challenging place. Planetary crises loom. Rising temperatures, wildfires, floods, droughts, famines, wars, pandemics, crushing inequality, and accelerating dispossession have evolved at dizzying speed into conditions of everyday life for many across the globe.

At the same time, 2024 feels full of possibility. Fundamental advances in communication, artificial intelligence, new materials, space exploration, and scientific understanding of the social and natural world promise unprecedented capacity to transform—for better or worse—the world around us.

"The future’s another country, man. And I still ain’t got a passport." ~ Zadie Smith

Confronting crises and taking advantage of opportunities are luxuries not everyone has. The university should be a space where the power of knowledge can be harnessed ambitiously to make a real difference.

Thinking rigorously about the future is daunting because it is far away and there are so many unknowns. We have long been captivated by science fiction because it provides charismatic ideas for possible futures—with flying cars or new, habitable planets—but the plotlines are often either frustratingly derivative of past worlds or untethered to reality, flights of fantasy that ignore history and material, social, or physical constraints.

Within the university itself, the future serves as an inspiration, but attachment to foundational ideas and paradigms can keep us tightly connected to well-trodden ground, rather than reaching further out into the unknown. Academic critiques of the present are often silent on alternatives for the future.

Your Team's Proposal

We ask you to choose an issue related to your research that you care about, whether that is language, water, peace, housing, food, or anything! It could be a product, a technology, a political system, or a condition of the body or mind, collective or individual. Then imagine an alternative future for that issue, one that could be deemed "successful"—sound, equitable, and sustainable. (See topic examples below.)

What are the implications of achieving that future in terms of worldwide distribution of resources and development of new regulations, technologies, and subjectivities? What technologies, infrastructures, systems, relationships, norms, and practices would be necessary to enable that sound, equitable, and sustainable future? How would that future play out across radically divergent conditions around the globe? And how do history and the ways in which diverse peoples make meaning of their world provide different perspectives on and for this new alternative?

"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them to the impossible." ~ Arthur C. Clark

Who decides what the alternative future should be, and how can visions of alternative futures avoid devolving into exclusionary models and short-term solutions that either replicate or exacerbate existing inequities? What is the set of academic disciplines and methodologies needed to imagine, outline, and analyze this future? How will they come together with contributions from the public sector, civil society, and private sector collaborators?

A Future of Global Importance

The challenge is to begin with the future—and to see it as a means, not an end. This will require reaching beyond the immediate, the tangible, the well-known constraints; in other words, it will require imagination, hope, and purpose.

We invite your team to imagine a particular future and then develop the scientific, social, and humanistic framework for achieving that future. The issue your team chooses can be at the smallest scale or the largest—from the individual to the community, nation-state, region, watershed, or international—but it must be of global importance.

We invoke imagination to suggest a turn to the possible, a collective act of creativity, optimism, and desire. We believe that imagining the future will provide conditions and create possibilities for starting dialogues among scientists and humanists, engineers and architects, planners, and artists. This necessitates new pedagogies and relationships centered around "what do we want" rather than "what can I do."

Proposal Requirements

Research project proposals must survey the chosen topic, describe the alternative future envisioned, and then outline the work to be done over the two years of the grant to develop a robust understanding of what would be needed to achieve that future. We are happy to support proposals that are highly speculative—risky and innovative—while being grounded in science and material, social, political, and physical realities.

Each successful team will be supported in developing a proposal for an externally funded center that will provide the resources needed to fund ongoing research, teaching, and engagement to understand and achieve the proposed future.

New courses or programs can be proposed as part of a research project or as stand-alone curricular projects. Stand-alone curricular projects will only be funded if they are supported by at least one department.

Letter of Intent (open to eligible researchers)

The letter of intent, due by February 26, must include this information:

• Tentative title (maximum of 255 characters)
• Names of prospective team members (not everyone named needs to have committed)
• Statement of proposed idea (maximum of 500 words)
  • Overview of the chosen topic, including identification of current problems
  • Description of alternative future
  • Summary of potential challenges that require examination if the future is to be achieved
  • Outline of disciplines and perspectives necessary to conduct the examination

Full Proposals (by invitation only)

Global Cornell will provide funding for interdisciplinary teams that take up an alternative future on a particular topic and map out the steps required to achieve that future, outlining the knowns and unknowns, the unintended consequences, and the implications.

A small number of teams will be selected by the faculty task force and invited to submit full proposals. In their proposals, teams should reflect the exigencies of the question at hand, pulling in interdisciplinary experts as required from Cornell and across the globe.

Proposals that involve international partners will be prioritized. Where possible, we will attempt to facilitate matched funding or other support from the partner institution for proposals incorporating international team members, particularly faculty and graduate students from Global Hubs partners.

Proposals must outline the chosen topic, describe the alternative future envisioned, and then outline work that would be done over the two years of the grant to develop a robust understanding of what would be needed to achieve that future. Typical work undertaken might include a series of guided brainstorming discussions, in-person workshops, initial research, meta-reviews, and so on. Projects are encouraged to include additional outcomes, such as one or more refereed publications in a nationally or internationally recognized scholarly journal, etc.

Proposals, due by May 6, must include this information and be submitted via InfoReady:

• Project title (maximum of 255 characters)
• Project abstract understandable by the general public (maximum of 150 words)
• Project timeline
• Project description (maximum 3,500)
• Brief CVs of project leadership team
• Project budget (template is provided in InfoReady portal)
  • For research proposals: Budget for up to $150,000 per year for two years, with funding to be spent between August 2024 and August 2026.
  • For curricular proposals: Budget for up to $20,000 per year for two years, with funding to be spent between August 2024 and August 2026.

How to Apply

Eligibility 

• Proposals are invited from researchers from all Cornell colleges, schools, and departments, including Cornell Tech, Geneva, and Weill Cornell Medicine.
• The lead PI must meet Cornell PI eligibility criteria.
• Graduate students, postdocs, and research assistants/associates are not eligible to apply as principal investigators, but they are welcome to join the applications.
• PIs may lead only one proposal but may be a team member on additional funded proposals.
• All projects must be structured to comply with applicable U.S. regulations, including export controls and the management of regulated technologies and data, and projects must satisfy Cornell’s commitment to the free and open publication of research results.

How to Apply

The principal investigator must submit all applications online via the Cornell InfoReady platform using their Cornell NetID and password. 

Only on-time and complete submissions will be considered. Successful applicants will receive a letter of award outlining the process to accept the award. Feedback on individual applications will not be provided.

Questions?

If you have questions about your application or need further information, please email globalgrants@cornell.edu.

Apply Now