Early-Career Human and Planetary Health Research Awards

About the Program

The Center for Human and Planetary Health and the Woods Institute's Early-Career Research Award (ECA) program provides seed grants up to $200,000 to early-career Stanford faculty doing interdisciplinary research that seek to identify solutions to pressing problems in human and planetary health. More information can also be found here.

Applications are now closed. Please check back again in November 2026. 

Scope of Work

Human and Planetary Health Early Career Awards focus on addressing complex human and planetary health issues – and providing career-building opportunities for early-career faculty who are leading impactful research. Awards are prioritized for projects that are innovative in approach, advance equity, and have the potential to produce solutions to major challenges. Research aligns with the Center for Human and Planetary Health’s four focal areas.

We Seek Projects That:

• Engage in one or more of the Center for Human and Planetary Health’s focus areas:
  • Climate and Health
  • Pollution and Health
  • Disease Ecology in a Changing World
  • Food Systems, Health, and the Environment
• Address complex human and planetary health issues, are innovative in approach, and have the potential to produce solutions to major challenges.
• Take a cross-cutting, systems-thinking, and multi-disciplinary approach.
• Advance and accelerate equity.
• Engage with external stakeholders, especially if the research takes place in a community setting.
• Provide career-building opportunities for junior faculty and instructors.
• Have the potential for obtaining additional support.

Key Dates

• January 12, 2026: Proposals due
• May 1, 2026:  Award letters are sent out
• October 1, 2026: Grants begin. Awards will be for 2 years or less, all grantees are eligible for one no-cost extension if necessary.

How to Apply

This call is open to PI-eligible early career faculty from all seven schools (Assistant Professors, Instructors, or Clinical Educators with Academic Council or University Medical Line standing). Up to two grants will be awarded in the 2026 round of applications. Amount of funding: $50,000 - $200,000. 
(If you have any questions about your project, eligibility, or research idea, please contact HPH Managing Director, Allison Phillips at ap10@stanford.edu.) 

Learn more and apply here.

Our Impact

Meet Our Faculty

The Early-Career Award program supports a range of Stanford faculty across the university in developing impactful, interdisciplinary, and solutions-oriented research.

Jade Benjamin-Chung, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health, Stanford School of Medicine

Impact of animal management and rural household environments on antimicrobial resistance (Principal Investigator, 2025 ECA)

Antimicrobial resistance is a critical planetary health threat that endangers human health, biodiversity, and microbial ecosystems. In rural, low-income country settings, unimproved housing, animal cohabitation, unhygienic livestock management, and improper antimicrobial use could foment the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This One Health study investigates how chicken management practices and household floor materials impact AMR colonization in pregnant mothers and children from birth to age 2 years in rural Bangladesh. One Health is a holistic research approach that acknowledges the compounding effects of climate change, population growth, and disease spread and seeks to achieve healthy outcomes, for people, animals, and the environment. This research aims to inform targeted interventions addressing the nexus of animal husbandry and rural housing to mitigate AMR. Under Dr. Benjamin-Chung’s leadership, the interdisciplinary team integrates epidemiology, environmental microbiology, and veterinary science and fosters international collaboration between scientists in the U.S. and Bangladesh.

Yuan Wang, Assistant Professor of Earth System Science, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

Assessing the health impacts of urban biogenic emissions under global warming (Principal Investigator, 2025 ECA)

While urban vegetation often provides benefits like cooling and carbon capture, its emissions can also contribute to air pollution in ways that we don’t yet fully understand. Additionally, biogenic emissions (emissions generated by natural sources like plants and soil) are expected to increase substantially under a warming climate, potentially outweighing the gains made through policy-driven emissions reductions. This project establishes an integrative framework to assess the impacts of biogenic emissions on urban air quality and conducts comprehensive assessments of public health risks under a changing climate. The team is developing high-resolution biogenic emissions models under future climate scenarios and improving air pollution and exposure attribution models. The findings will foster awareness of urban greening’s dual benefits and risks, promoting more informed decisions in the context of healthy city planning. New modeling tools from the project will help identify and optimize strategies for urban greening plans. This project serves as a stepping stone for a broader research agenda aimed at integrating air quality management, public health, and urban ecology to achieve healthier and more sustainable cities.

Kara Meister, Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery (OHNS) and, by courtesy, of Pediatrics, Stanford School of Medicine

Measuring nano/microplastics in human immune tissue (Principal Investigator, 2024 ECA)

Over 430 million tons of plastic are produced yearly, with a projected growth of about 5% annually. Measuring plastics is complex, akin to assessing the dirt in your yard; you could measure it by weight, area, or its capacity to support your favorite succulent. Similarly, dirt can be defined as sand, soil, clay, etc. This complexity mirrors the challenge of quantifying nano- and microplastics in human tissues, which can consist of various “forever chemicals” conjugated to different dyes, compounds, and other materials. This project unites multiple labs and research groups across Stanford’s campus to advance the ability to detect and measure nano- and microplastics in human tissue. Accurately measuring nano- and microplastics in human tissue is a critical step toward evaluating the potential effects of plastics on human systems, monitoring impacts across the population, and ultimately informing policy and personal choices regarding exposure to plastics.

Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, Assistant Professor of Earth System Science and Assistant Professor of Environmental Social Sciences, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

Establishing data-driven community mitigation strategies for climate change and air quality on the Tule River Reservation (Principal Investigator, 2023 ECA)

Due to its location on the eastern edge of the San Joaquin Valley, the Tule River Reservation in Tulare County, California, has the third highest levels of air pollution in the nation and a high risk of wildfires and exposure to wildfire smoke. To identify culturally appropriate, actionable interventions that improve environmental quality and resident wellbeing, this project will implement air pollution monitoring, and seek to understand how tribal members view environmental pollution and what role they see for data obtained from pollution monitoring in the development of policies and programs. The work will be done in collaboration with the Tule River Indian Tribe and Tribal partners, with plans to implement results of the work on the reservation to increase resiliency.

Jenny Suckale, Associate Professor of Geophysics, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

Resilient healthcare infrastructure nexus: assessing extreme weather-related vulnerability and identifying resilience options in Mozambique, Africa (Principal Investigator, 2023 ECA)

Healthcare systems are connected with and dependent on other sectors, namely water, energy, transportation, and telecommunications. A blow to one or more of these sectors could induce cascading effects on others, leading to large-scale catastrophes that spiral out of control. Using Mozambique, a developing country, as a case study, this projects aims to create a model that is able to capture the interconnectivity, interdependency, and flow of the healthcare infrastructure nexus. Working with the partners, including the World Bank, the researchers will investigate the cascading impacts of climate-change-induced extreme weather events, such as floods and tropical cyclones, on the healthcare infrastructure nexus, and identify evidence-based resilience options under future climate scenarios. The analysis will contribute to the knowledge base and toolbox that helps international organizations better target critical infrastructure sectors and stakeholders in developing strategic response, recovery, mitigation, and preparation plans.

William Tarpeh, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, Stanford School of Engineering

Co-creating sanitation justice: community-based monitoring and mitigation of climate-exacerbated pollution (Principal Investigator, 2023 ECA)

Sanitation access in the U.S. is widespread but still not universal. Communities lacking safe sanitation suffer from disproportionate exposure to environmental contaminants and increased vulnerability to climate change. This project aims to address these intersecting issues in a rural, majority Black community in Lowndes County, Alabama, where inadequate sanitation, including malfunctioning septic tanks, can lead to prohibitively expensive maintenance and irreversible algal blooms that compromise ecosystems and livelihoods. In collaboration with community organizations, such as the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, this project will relate sanitation contaminant exposure to demographic indicators, prioritize effects of climate change stressors on sanitation-related health impacts, and design improved sanitation infrastructure that maximizes economic viability and community engagement.

Joelle Rosser, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases), Stanford School of Medicine

Impact of flooding and trash on climate-sensitive infectious diseases (Principal Investigator, 2024 ECA)

Extreme weather events like flooding are becoming more frequent and severe with climate change. Trash in the environment can amplify infectious disease transmission during floods. Inadequate tools for mapping human exposure to floods and trash limits our understanding of how flood and trash dynamics confer disease risk. Additionally, researchers currently lack reproducible methods to quantify a change in trash abundance to test the impact of trash reduction interventions. This study pilots a novel approach to high-resolution mapping and quantification of flooding and trash using robotic drones. This study also tests the hypothesis that higher flood and trash exposure at the household level increases the risk of climate-sensitive infectious diseases.

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