The Coleman Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership is evolving to meet today’s most pressing challenges, repositioning itself around sustainability and innovation. At the heart of this shift is the transformation of its Master of Engineering (MEng) “Conservation and Innovation” concentration into a new “Sustainability and Innovation” track, reflecting how the Institute sees the future of impact-driven engineering.
With an expected launch in Fall 2026, this shift marks a deliberate expansion of how the Institute engages with the urgent challenges of our time. While conservation remains vital, it is focused on preservation and minimizing damage.Sustainability is generative and forward-looking, a lens through which we can ask critical questions about how to build endur
ing and adaptable institutions. Framing the track around sustainability invites students to think holistically about interconnected ecological, social, and economic systems. It also more accurately captures the breadth of work already underway across the Fung Fellowship and MEng programs: climate resilience, clean energy, food systems, water infrastructure, circularity, sustainable mobility, and environmental justice.
Interconnected challenges require interconnected solutions, and sustainability creates space for this complexity. A harmful algal bloom, for example, is an environmental challenge, a public health issue, and an economic disruption — a sustainable solution would address all these ramifications. It would bring engineers to the table with environmental scientists, policymakers, community organizers, and business leaders.
For the Fung Institute, this reframing describes the approach Fu
ng Fellows have long integrated into their projects. Team HABit, for example, developed an earlydetection system for harmful algal blooms in the San Francisco Bay. By integrating real-time environmental data into everyday platforms like Google Maps and Weather apps, the team set out to make environmental data accessible and actionable, ultimately promoting a more sustainable relationship between people and their local marine ecosystems.
Team AquaLearn took a different approach to environmental connection, building an AR/VR educational app in partnership with Blue Endeavors. Moving beyond abstract advocacy for marine protection, they focused on inspiring the next generation’s relationship to marine ecosystems through direct, engaging experiences.
Meanwhile, a food sovereignty initiative with the Hoopa Valley Tribe aimed to improve the community’s health and self-sufficiency. Fellows designed a cooking curriculum using commodity box ingredients, trained community instructors through local partnerships, and tackled systemic barriers to quality food, like access to transportation. The project has empowered the Hoopa Valley community to reclaim agency over their health and food systems, reflecting a vision of sustainability as dignified and enduring self-determination.
Projects like these address environmental, technological, social, and cultural dimensions simultaneously, building long-term resilience for both ecosystems and communities. Students engage with diverse partners to ensure that solutions have practical pathways into policy, community implementation, and the marketplace.
The new Sustainability and Innovation framing formalizes this expanded vision of responsible engineering. Beyond that, it builds the infrastructure for increasingly ambitious work. It positions students to engage with a broader ecosystem of partners — including nonprofits, public agencies, and startups — who are creating solutions across issues from clean energy transitions to environmental justice. The concentration fosters the kind of interdisciplinary collaboration and systems thinking that sustainability challenges demand.
The shift to sustainability isn’t just a matter of semantics — it positions the Fung Institute at the forefront of solutions that matter and commits to building capacity for the challenges ahead.